Re: [tied] for ignorants

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 15860
Date: 2002-10-01

 
----- Original Message -----
From: Alexander Stolbov
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, October 01, 2002 11:27 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] for ignorants

> Piotr, do you include the language of Novgorod Slovenes into
Krivichian subgroup?
> I'm not sure that this is correct. Perhaps they had similar areas of
origin (somewhere close to western Slavic tribes) but moved northeastward as 2 different waves and are very distinctive archaeologically.
 
I don't know anything about their language. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if the emerging groupings had mixed already at the common Slavic stage. Many if not most major "languages", e.g. German, Italian, Spanish and even English are actually convergence areas of polydialectal origin.
 
 
> The "traditional" East Slavic subgroup after subtraction of Krivichian
and Novgorod Slovenes includes rather homogeneous post-Dulebic nucleus plus White Croats (belong to West Balkan branch ?) and Tivertsy+Ulichi which seem to be of a special origin (perhaps descendants of Ants ?). Maybe one should distinguish the Dulebic subgroup to avoid a wrong association with the "traditional" East Slavic subgroup.
 
Perhaps, but what linguistic data have we got for those early times? Anyway, the family tree model is valid only so far. In a network of closely related dialects without well-defined boundaries and genetic taxonomy breaks own and models describing the diffusion of innovations ("wave theories") are more appropriate. Whatever tree we posit for Slavic, its branches will be only roughly defined and there will be some embarrassing tangles.
 
Piotr