Re: [tied] Walachians are placed far North the Danube in Nestor (10

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alexandru_mg3" <alexandru_mg3@...>
take up the following point I had raised:

> >What I find unsettling about the Nestor argument is that it has no
> >conceivable bearing on the problem, even if we grant that
> >Nestor's/Sylvester's Walachians were speakers of Rumanian. Given

the

> >Balkan potential for small populations of mountain pastoralists to
> >expand into suitable low-lying areas, demographic conditions in the
> >ninth century just cannot be projected back into the past.

He does so as follows:

> Why 'Nestor argument is that it has no conceivable bearing on

the

> problem'? The details that gives here are quite impressionant:

exact

> place name: river names, city names, populations etc...please read
> him again the details indicates clearly shows a well informed

person.

> I also want to ask you if is true that: 'river Polota, flows into
> Dvina' or we have to doubt this to.

The reason is very elementary and I am sure I stated it clearly
enough in the passage quoted: even if all of the PVL evidence is
trustworthy (which it may well turn out to be) it concerns too late a
period.


Sorry for sounding pompous, but if what we want is construct a
credible picture of the history of the languages of the Balkan, the
first thing we have to keep in mind alongside the linguistic facts
are the dynamics of Balkan demographics.


W.