Re: Northern Baltic substratum?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Michael Smith"
> <mytoyneighborhood@...> wrote:
> >
> > Can Bronze Age settlements from the northern Baltic regions be
> > speculatively identified at all through a possible substratum
> behind
> > Baltic in this region? Or are Baltic-speaking tribal groups
> believed
> > to have been present in this region during the Bronze Age?
> >
> > Thoughts?
> >
> If by 'Baltic' you mean 'close to the Baltic Sea' your question is
> difficult to understand. Baltic is spoken today in the southern,

not

> nothern end of the Baltic Sea.
>
> PIE has free accent. Lithuanian has free accent. Latvian has

initial

> accent. Estonian and Finnish have initial accent. Polish once had
> initial accent. Germanic has initial accent. One gets the

impression

> that Lithuanian is an old IE incursion (from the sea?) into an area
> which spoke a language with initial accent.

Except that Proto-Slavic also has a free(ish), mobile accent. See
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/14555 for a dating of
the initial stress in Polish (perhaps establised as late as 1200) and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/14553 for the Polish
shift from initial to penultimate.

Richard.