22-10-03 15:56, tgpedersen wrote:
>> I call such hypothetical groups "para-Germanic".
>
> And Bastarnian would be a hypothetical member of such a group, I
> would suggest.
Not impossible.
> Yes, but hold on here. The expansion of the Germani and their
> language in the standard model, as far as I know, took place in
> historical times in Britain, Iceland and Germany south of the
> Weisswurstäquator (or the Benrath line?). Northern (Jastorf) Germany
> and Southern Scandinavia by definition would then according to the
> standard model before that time have spoken a homogenous language.
> And the development of "efficient socio-political structures" in
> general leads to less diversity, not more (cf. the connection between
> Celtic factionalism and the diversity of Celtic languages), or the
> multitude of languages on the Balkan and the Balkanic politics (no
> value judgement intended) of that area.
Leaving alone the Balkans (see, however, Jim Rader's posting --
"multitude" is an overstatement), the creation of large political
organisms does not necessarily result in linguistic homogeneity (note
that we aren't talking about modern-style national states). Even if the
range of a single language expands in that way, initial homogeneity will
soon be followed by regional differentiation and increasing diversity --
after all, the Romance language owe their origin to the political
success of Rome.
Of course the early Germani were not politically unified, and they did
not build a single empire extending from Britain to Ukraine. Rather than
that, they learnt to organise themselves into intertribal confederacies
and then into a number of large territorial units with some kind of
hierarchic political structure -- let's call them kingdoms. They
expanded to fill any political void that happened to be available. I see
no reason why that should have produced greater uniformity rather than
increasing heterogeneity. Ostrogoths were Ostrogoths and Franks were
Franks, and the more time elapsed, the more different they were.
Piotr