Re: Loans, Slavs, Church (it was : Walachians are placed far North

From: willemvermeer
Message: 35766
Date: 2005-01-03

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alex" <alxmoeller@...> wrote:
> willemvermeer wrote:


[In the context of joint Romanian-albanian features:]


> > (d) certain features having to do with the dialect map.

> here I am afraid I am not very sure what you mean ...


It becomes clear further on. It has to do with the fact that Romanian
as a whole is just a bit more Tosk than Geg and that NR is slightly
more Tosk than SR. This shows that the final phase of the period of
Albanian-Romanian interaction postdates both the latest Common
Albanian and Common Romanian phases.


[On the structure of nominal syntagms I'd said:]

> > It is almost a clichee of the study of the balkanisms that
Albanian
> > and Romanian go very closely together, notably with respect to the
> > development of a suffixed definite article and associated changes
> > affecting the structure of nominal syntagms.

> Which is present in Greek and Bulgarian as well but the way how
this is
> used, is specific only to Albanian and Romanian. The usage of the
definite
> article is different from Greek and Bulgarian and its usage is
almost same
> in Alb. and Rom.

That's exactly what I mean.


Then:

> Making a paralel to the DR and AR, the shcolars assume the
developments
> which are identic in AR with DR are not because of a "prolonged
symbiosis"
> but they are independent developments. Why should be one way
preferable to
> another way appears to me now as being more a matter of taste as
based on
> some good reasons. I will like to see why in the case of Alb-Rom
one should
> speak about "prolonged symbiosis" and why in the case of DR-AR one
has to
> speak about independent developments. If we don't have a solid
argumentation
> for one or another alternative, the solution we take appears to
remain a
> matter of taste and this shouldn't be too convincing, regardless
which
> alternative one prefers or considers to be "obvious".

Well, the standard way of accounting for joint AR and DR features is
to assume a Common Romanian period during which a number of Common
Romanian innovations took place. What I don't like about the
term "prolonged symbiosis" is not that it is wrong, but that it tends
to discourage interest in specifics.



> I am afraid this "evidence" should be explained. I do know thge
large scale
> military operations begun already with the Goths South of Danube
and it
> begun already with the Carps & Marcomans north of Danube. Which is
this
> evidence you mean?


Most of it came up in one way or another in earlier postings. The
actions of Attila's Huns in the fourties of the fifth century caused
the capital of the province of "Illyricum' to be moved from Sirmium
in the Belgrade area to Thessalonika in what is now northern Greece.
That is a spectacular retreat, which sealed the division of the Roman
empire into two parts. Naissos in southern Serbia became for a time
the northernmost town under Roman administration, although it was
deserted when Priscus passed by in 448 or 449. Twenty years later
Theodoric's Goths were offered "Dardania" to settle, on the grounds
that it was fertile and uninhabited. If Procopius is to be trusted,
one of those who escaped the awful conditions of southern Serbia in
these years was the later emperor Justin I (518-527), whose, I think,
nephew reigned as Justinian I (527-565). Justinian, as is well known,
tried to unify the Empire again, but failed, partly as a consequence
of a number of disasters nobody could have predicted, notably a
devastating epidemic (542), which recurred in the late fifties and
early seventies, an unprecedented series of earthquakes, two of which
hit the capital, and almost yearly incursions of people
called "Slavs" beginning in the late forties. Not only did Slavs
settle on what was at least nominally still imperial territory
(beginning in the fifties), but around 560 people called "Avars"
established a power base in the Hungarian Plain and started from
there to harrass most of Europe, and notably the Empire, with a view
of extorting money, which succeeded beyond expectation. Avar
operations often involved Slavs, who tended to settle wherever arable
land was available (and who were not above making land available by
evicting the rightful owners). Justinian's successors (Justin II,
Tiberius Constantine, Maurice, Phocas, and Heraclius could not
prevent a total collapse of Byzantine control on the Balkans except
from coastal towns, which could be provided with food from the sea.
In 626, Avars, Slavs, Gepids and Arabs besieged Byzance. The siege
failed and from that moment on no large-scale Avar operations on the
Balkans are mentioned any more. Nevertheless regaining control of the
Balkans proved very difficult. A first attempt to do something about
the Slavs took place in 658 and did not get very far. Further
attempts took place in 678 and 688/9, and slowly a limited measure of
control over such areas as northern and central Greece appears to
have been regained, although unfortunately facts are thin on the
ground because the collapse of just about everything but the
capital's walls also brought history-writing to a virtual standstill.
More or less all of this is textbook knowledge, culled by generations
of diligent scholars from Jordanes, Procopius, John of Ephesus,
Theophylactus Simocattes, "Pseudo-Maurice", the "Miracles of St.
Demetrius", the Monemvasia chronicle and similar sources. Nowadays
the collapse of urban life in such towns as Scupi (Skopje) and
Serdica (Sophia) has been documented also by the results of
archeological research.


I had written:

> >
> > ... enormous tracts of lands suitable for mountain
> > pastoralism became available and it is my contention that the
> > speakers of northern Romanian gradually filled the void during the
> > ensuing centuries.
>
> well, that should be somewhere outside of Bizantine Empire since
they are
> not recorded at all until XI century within it. Should they have
been inside
> of Bulgarian Empire?


Partly.


> I am afraid a such scenario can be made just when one does not know
how is
> the life in the mountains. One cannot survive in big number there.
The
> mountains are good to resists so long the food is enough but they
are not
> the place to live for centuries. One needs the valleys, the control
of the
> streets. This is my opinion as one who knows how is to live in
mountains but
> this opinion can be very subiective. The idea of "people becoming a
lot in
> the mountains and comming down into valleys" appears not very
convincing to
> me, less one has a such Geographic situation as in Transilvania.
But that is
> an another story.


I agree up to a point, but people are well able to survive in
mountains indefinitely, although it goes without saying that there
must somewhere be an upper limit to their numbers. Mountainous areas
are very good at sustaining demographic pressure. (The point has come
up in earlier postings.) It is not for nothing that "Illyria" was
well known in antiquity for exporting two things: cheese (i.e. the
principal product of pastoralism) and soldiers, i.e. the principal
product of demographic pressure.


> so, we have: recent shift to Slavic, not very numerous. That will
speak more
> for recent imigrants as in Polen, Slovakia, Ukraine, people who got
quick
> (assimilated by the big mass of Slavs they lived with (2-3
centuries ?)


I don't understand this. The modern structure of Bulgarian-Macedonian
(and the SCr of southern Serbia) can be explained as the outcome of
speakers of Romanian having learned Slavic but in doing so having
transposed some elements of the structure of Romanian to their way of
speaking Slavic, after which some salient characteristics of the type
of Slavic as spoken by ex-speakers of Romanian were generalized, e.g.
limited number of cases, sufixe definite article, limited use of the
infinitive, no vowel length, vowel reduction in nasal contexts. On
the other hand the historical facts indicate that elsewhere Vlachs
have usually been assimilated without such spectacular results.


>
> The main issue is to find out the place where the Vlachs
> have been until X century, before they got mentioned first time as
comming
> from NorthWest of the Bizantine Empire.


On the scenario I've tried to sketch, speakers of Romanian were to be
found as mountain pastoralists beginning in a small area not far from
Ohrid in, say, the sixth century, after which they spread slowly but
inexorably north (into Serbia and Bosnia) and east (into Macedonia
and Bulgaria) and ultimately into what is now Romania, mainly because
a lot of land that suited their lifestyle was there for the taking.
It is impossible to tell when people started using the label
of "Vlach" to refer to them, but that must have happened by the ninth
century at the latest and probably earlier. The scenario accounts for
some of the most important elements common to Albanian and Romanian,
but also for the balkanisms of Bulgarian-Macedonian and southern
Serbian, for the spectacular spread of Romanian, and a number of
other things, such as the apparently quite noticeable south-Danubian
presence of "Vlachs" during the centuries immediately preceding and
following the year 1000. By the way, most or all of the scenario is
pretty old, although I would be hard put to give precise references.

----

On OCS:


> Apud Rosetti, his ILR, page 300:
> "the OCS has been a Bulgar dialect spooken in the IX century in the
region
> of Salonic...."
> Further he quotes:
> -Sc^epkin: "OCS is one of the dialects of Bulgarian language"
> -Mladenov: "actualy Bulgarian language was formed out of a
Bulgarian
> dialect, an another as OCS"


I wouldn't put it that way, but does it differ fundamentally from my
description?



Willem