--- In cybalist@..., x99lynx@... wrote:
> "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote
>
> More specifically, is there a strictly linguistic reason to think
this split
> could NOT have happened around say 250 BC?
>
> Thanks and regards,
> Steve Long
But splits happen for a reason. A thousand years ago they spoke one
language in Scandinavia and several in Germany. Today it's the other
way around. Why? As the saying goes here: It used to be that water
connected and land separated. Today it's the other way around.
In other words: for a split to have occurred at a certain time
between NW and E Germanic at that time, in a language the
geographical extent of which was defined by the Baltic-Black Sea
trade route, there must have been a disruption of trade at that time.
Where is the evidence for that?
Personally I find the Babel tower story convincing, if not in the
specific case, then in general terms: A people has just started
agriculture, and spend therefore most of their life seeing the same
people, never having to travel, except once a year after the harvest
to build flood-safe observation-tower. What happens? In the fifty or
hundred years or so (some Medieval cathedrals took longer) it took to
build the tower, the dialect of each village changed so much that
they became mutually incomprehensible. And BTW an agricultural or in
some other way sedentary lifestyle is the necessary prerequiste for
19th century dialect maps to be true; in countries criss-crossed with
freeways they make no sense.
Torsten