----- Original Message -----
From:
george knysh
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, October 14, 2002
4:14 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Check out Origin of Ancient
Languages
*****GK: "Balto-Slavic" as breaking up into three lineages:
-->Proto-West Baltic, -->Proto-East Baltic, and -->Proto-Slavic [ca.
1300-700 BC]? *****
Let's say, beginning to differentiate into regional
groups, while probably remaining a dialectal continuum in some respects. How
many different groups there were initially is anyone's guess. The West
Baltic/Slavic split may have come later than that; perhaps they parted ways
for good in immediately pre-Zarubinetska times: the (Proto-)West Baltic
colonisation of the lands between the Niemen and the Vistula (in several waves)
is ofted dated to ca. 500-200 BC. Three major lineages of Balto-Slavic survived
until historical times, but others may have been absorbed by Proto-Slavic during
its rapid expansion or become "pruned out" even earlier.
***GK: I
suppose that it took some time for the -->Proto-Slavic lineage to acquire
sufficiently distinct characteristics. What would be your informed guess as to
the earliest possible time for the emergence of "Proto-Slavic" on
linguistic grounds? On
archaeological grounds it would be very difficult to
argue for a period earlier than the Zarubynets'ka culture (200 BC-200 AD). The
historical evidence seems to indicate that in Herodotus' time pre-Balts and
pre-Slavs were still lumped together under the designation of "Neuri", although
the Balto-Slav territory where the "most ancient" Slavic toponyms and hydronyms
can be found (thoroughly mixed with Baltisms BTW), viz., the area south of the
Pripet r. were under Scythian control. I wonder if that is the time frame for
the differentiation of the "god" name as used by "Balts" and "Slavs". The
southernmost "Balto-Slavic" territory continued to maintain strong links with
post-Scythian political formations in the south.*****
It's difficult to
determine the time necessary for a separate lineage to emerge, since
"glottochronological" metrics cannot be trusted. However, the Slavic group is
very coherent in terms of linguistic features; there are numerous common
innovations not shared with Baltic, and of course there are Iranian influences
and East Germanic loans that aren't shared either. A language ancestral to
Slavic must have been relatively distinct from the rest of Balto-Slavic already
before the arrival of the Goths in its vicinity, and my impression based on the
degree of coherence we find in Slavic is that one ought to extend its
prehistory much further back. I'd estimate, cautiously, that (pre-)Proto-Slavic
acquired some of its unique characteristics during the latter half of the first
millennium BC and at the very beginning of the common era, perhaps at the same
time as Proto-Germanic. Proto-Slavic proper (the latest common ancestor of the
known Slavic languages) developed still more common innovations (e.g. vowel
changes, the second palatalisation) between AD 200 and 500. This squares quite
well with archaeological data, I think, and gives Proto-Slavic a sufficiently
long period of separate development.
Piotr