Re: [tied] Re: Early Spread of Germanic

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From: x99lynx@...

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2002 2:28 PM

Subject: [tied] Re: Early Spread of Germanic

> Thanks for the reply, Piotr.  Let me ask if I have this right and whether it jives what you are saying so that I phrase my question right:

> Jastrof starts to expand say about 500 BC and this is the expansion of Germanic or the last of proto-Germanic or whatever into, let's call it, the northern European plain roughly.  At some point, this expansion begins to result in differentiation - different dialects or languages develop as a simple matter of distance or whatever.

 

Yes, I agree with this summary.

> Now there may have been all kinds of divisons, but the first basic division we have linguistic evidence of is "NorthWest" and "East" Germanic.  (You also seem say that "East" really stands for something like "all others."  But, on the other hand, the "only satisfactorily documented" East language is Gothic.)

 

What we know for sure is that Gothic differs from NW Germanic, and the taxonomic position of the undocumented dead languages is inevitably conjectural. The geographical configuration of the linguistically enigmatic Germanic peoples plus, occasionally, linguistic features fossilised in tribal and personal names suggest that at least some of them were non-NWG. As I said, the whole thing was not so much a split as the emergence of the NWG cluster against the background of dialects that we call collectvely "East Germanic" for the sake of convenience.

> Now, my first question(s): Is there any evidence as to when this split happened?  Or rather when did the differentiating NW characteristics arise to such a degree that a linguist might feel justified in saying the split had happened? (Now I mean linguistically rather than, say, archaeologically.)

> More specifically, is there a strictly linguistic reason to think this split
could NOT have happened around say 250 BC? 

The differentiation was gradual, as the decisive innovations did not occur all at once. I would say that the earliest Runic inscriptions in northern Germania (ca. 2nd c.) already show NWGermanic features. Hypothetical linguists observing the state of things ca. 250 BC would perhaps have been able to see enough regional differentiation to declare Germanic divided, but I can't tell you with any certainty what exactly would have happened by then.

 

Piotr