Re: [tied] Re: Language - Area - Routes

----- Original Message -----

From: tgpedersen@...

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2001 11:28 AM

Subject: [tied] Re: Language - Area - Routes

>> I doubt if a clear division line existed at all before the late fifth century; more likely, there was a dialectal continuum extending from northern Germany to coastal Scandinavia, with "North Sea" and "West Sea" influences interpenetrating.

> Not necessarily a continuum. If trafic is by sea, you must take account of the harborless and dangerous stretch of West Jutland coast (Esbjerg and Hanstholm are recent and artificial). West Jutland, because of poor soil, was almost empty until 150 years ago.

 

The North Sea approach is indeed difficult, but here continuity existed on land, with a network of similar dialects reaching down the neck of Jutland into Mecklenburg, Lower Saxony and Frisia. What I'm arguing for is simply the non-existence of a sharp division between West and North Germanic until rather recently (the 5th century at the earliest).

> The Jutes were never "superseded". West Jutish dialects have w (vs. v), hw- (vs. v), "thick" l (as in English) and trilled r (vs. uvular). Final schwa disappears. They have one gender (vs. two). What you say is all textbook stuff, dreamed up by English and German linguists. I can't blame you for that, of course.  

No real disagreement here, just a question of wording and emphasis. I just mean that a language shift took place. Jutish did not survive in Jutland as a distinct language, but the remaining Jutish population was absorbed rather than driven out or exterminated, so their dialectal traits are recognisable as a substrate in the regional variety of Danish. It was rather like the linguistic absorption of Danelaw in England.

> A sudden conversion! I'm shocked but pleased.

 

No conversion, just a clarification of my views lest you should think I'm automatically hostile to whatever you say :)

> Either way, I suspect the dialect gap between North and West Germanic has more to do with the expansion of the Slavs into Holstein (Wagrien, Obodrites).

 

I think the expansion of the Danes was an important factor in the emergence of the divide, but of course the appearance of the Polabian Slavs in the sixth century happened just at the right time to perpetuate it by creating an ethnic barrier between the Danes and the Saxons (and other "Ingveonic" tribes). Both events contributed to the separation.

> So, next step in my reasoning is this: If you have a boatload of something that will get a good price in the Black Sea/Mediterranean "Raum" (as the Germans call it; unfortunately there is no good English equivalent expression for "area well connected internally by routes and less so externally") and your boat has no keel and is no
deeper in the water than you can reach the river Tanew, would you then sell your wares on the local market (there are always markets on transfer points, most cities started out as a fenced market at a harbor or a crossroads) or would you try to drag your ship across to
the other, southwards river system? It can be done by means of horses and rollers, they tried it here some years ago.

Yes, there were regular trade contacts between the northern seas and the Mediterranean/Pontic region at least as early as the North European Bronze Age. Major rivers like the Elbe, the Oder and the Vistula would have taken an enterprising trader to "transit points" between navigable river systems. Of course in order to make an long-distance trading expedition worth the risk you must have something that will sell really well on a distant foreign market (amber, furs, slaves, etc.).

 

I'll tell you more: well before you joined this list the IE homeland controversy had been discussed here. The hypothesis that I defended in those debates was that the first IEs should be identified with the Neolithic cultures of the Middle Danube basin. My view is that they were typical riverside-dwellers and skilful boaters rather than steppe vaqueros, and that they used rivers and their valleys as entry routes into Northern Europe and as cultural communication lines. We also discussed the Vistula-Dniester "conveyor belt" (Mark Odegard's term), which provides easy access from the North European Plain into the Pontic region, also by boat.

 

But here's the chronology: the Danubian Neolithic-carriers expanded about 5500 BC. The first Neolithic culture of Jutland and Scandinavia emerged ca. 4300 BC. We are talking of a period that is still far remote in time from the drowning of Sundaland. I see no need to trace back all traditions that have to do with water and boats to a single source. What's so special about the Sundaland flood? If you want to study the impact of natural disasters on human culture, there were quite impressive and better-timed floods much closer to home; the most famous one is the Black Sea event about the middle of the sixth millennium BC.

 

Piotr