From: george knysh
Message: 57168
Date: 2008-04-11
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh****GK: Sorry, Torsten,but this won't do. You're
> <gknysh@...> wrote:
> >
> >
> > --- tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> >
> > > That makes the languages of the
> > > cultures you mention siblings (titled 'Para-')
> and
> > > parents of that
> > > Przeworsk language. And I think it was not so
> much
> > > Grimm-shifted, as
> > > Grimm-shifting, ie. it was in the process of
> > > shifting, probably in the
> > > sense that there was an upper crust who had
> > > Grimm-shifted, and that
> > > the Grimm-shifted words became shibboleths in
> > > relationship to the
> > > surrounding para-Germanic languages,
> >
> > GK: But what is missing here is an explanation
> as
> > to why this role should be assigned to "the
> Przeworsk
> > language" in particular.
> >
>
> Theories compete. The competition of this one has a
> problem with the
> fact that the Germanic language groups we know must
> have split up
> appr. 2000 years ago; Runic is pretty close to
> reconstructed PGmc.
> This one can explain that as a consequence of a
> language spreading
> from a small area, the competition has no
> explanation why this should
> suddenly happen in a static society (as they
> assune). I hope the
> detour we made recently, over the nature of
> diglossia, pidgins and
> creoles makes it understandable why it could be
> possible that Gothic,
> the language of the Wielbark culture, at least in
> its elite version
> (which is what we may assume they used for their
> Bible translation)
> was the language of Berig's people.