I am trying to understand the principles how a proto language produces it daughter languages, do they proliferate from dialects of the same proto language or do they proliferate from dialects of other daughter languages?
E.g. Are English, German, Dutch and Icelandic all originally dialects of Proto-German or are they dialects of another daughter language. Does this actually happen where a daughter becomes the proto for another set of languages? (like Italian seems to descend from Latin but Italian itself seems to be a proto language for later Italian languages?
Note: Please don't just downvote me for just wanting to understand linguistics better, otherwise I will take my questions elsewhere where I wont get shot down merely for trying to know something currently unfamiliar to me.
