----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, October 01, 2002 11:27 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] for ignorants
> Piotr, do you include the language of Novgorod Slovenes into
Krivichian subgroup?
> I'm not sure that this is correct. Perhaps they had similar areas of
origin (somewhere close to western Slavic tribes) but moved northeastward as 2
different waves and are very distinctive archaeologically.
I don't know anything about their language. I wouldn't be surprised,
though, if the emerging groupings had mixed already at the common Slavic stage.
Many if not most major "languages", e.g. German, Italian, Spanish and even
English are actually convergence areas of polydialectal origin.
> The "traditional" East Slavic subgroup after subtraction of Krivichian
and Novgorod Slovenes includes rather homogeneous post-Dulebic nucleus plus
White Croats (belong to West Balkan branch ?) and Tivertsy+Ulichi which seem to
be of a special origin (perhaps descendants of Ants ?). Maybe one should
distinguish the Dulebic subgroup to avoid a wrong association with the
"traditional" East Slavic subgroup.
Perhaps, but what linguistic data have we got for those early
times? Anyway, the family tree model is valid only so far. In a network of
closely related dialects without well-defined boundaries and genetic taxonomy
breaks own and models describing the diffusion of innovations ("wave theories")
are more appropriate. Whatever tree we posit for Slavic, its branches will be
only roughly defined and there will be some embarrassing tangles.
Piotr