Re: [tied] Digest Number 1241

----- Original Message -----
From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <piotr.gasiorowski@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2003 12:41 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Digest Number 1241


> ... Finnish is more closely related to Estonian than either is to Saami, though they all belong to a single subbranch within Finno-Ugric (usually called "Baltic Finnic"). They probably began to diverge more than two thousand years ago.

Sorry, it's only now that I have noticed what could be considered a mistake in my posting; at any rate, it calls for a longer comment.

The Baltic Finnic (or Balto-Fennic, or simply Finnic) group as usually defined comprises Finnish, Estonian, Karelian (with Olonetsian) as well as Veps, Lude, Ingrian, Livian and Votian. Together with he Saami group they form the Finno-Saami branch (a.k.a. Saami-Finnic, Finno-Lappic, etc.).

OTOH, the status of Saami (divided into three subgroups and up to about ten distinct languages whose diversity is considerably greater than what we find within Baltic Finnic) is somewhat unclear. The relationship between the Saami languages and Baltic Finnic is certainly close, but it is possible that there was no clearcut bifurcation in the family tree below the Proto-BF node and that Saami is actually a cover term for a paraphyletic collection of several "basal" Finnic languages (forming an areal but not a genetic unit).

It might therefore be more reasonable to reserve the term Finnic for a branch that includes all the Saami languages, and to regard "Inner" Finnic (= Baltic Finnic in the traditional sense) as one of its several subbranches.

Piotr