From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 19361
Date: 2003-02-27
----- Original Message -----
From: <lookwhoscross-eyednow@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003 7:07 PM
Subject: [tied] Lusitanian and Paleo-Balkan
> Hey, I saw on one IE web set an Indo-European "family tree" and Lusitanian was placed as a seperate branch rather than with Celtic. It had a question mark next to it, so the person who made it was unsure, but could Lusitanian be a seperate branch, or is it related to Gaulish?
Lusitanian is poorly known, but seems to lie outside Celtic. It lacks some common Celtic innovations, e.g. it seems to have preserved PIE *p-, lost in Celtic. The Lusitanians probably represented an early, pre-Celtiberian expansion of IEs into Iberia.
> Also, is the Paleo-Balkan a genetic or geographical grouping? I know that it includes Phrygian, Thracian, Illyrian, and Macedonian, but would it also include Hellenic, Armenian and Albanian (of course the ancestor of Albanian and maybe even Armenian is probably uncertain).
Definitely geographical, like the modern Balkan Sprachbund.
> As far as the Macedonian language, I've seen some place it with Thracian and Illyrian, and others with the Hellenic branch. There's of course the dispute of whether the Macedonians were Greeks or a seperate Indo-European branch.
Greek scholars often insist that Macedonian was merely a dialect of Ancient Greek, but some features of Macedonian place it clearly outside of Greek, e.g. the preservation (and voicing) of intervocalic *-s- (> [z] or whatever Greek zeta was employed to stand for), or the merger of the *d and *dH series (both > *d, as opposed to Gk. *d : *tH).
> One Encyclopedia I read said that Macedonian was closest to Aeolian Greek, but some say that it is related to Dorian and that the Macedonians were Dorians. In this referance is made to Herodotus statement that the Dorians (before they were known as Dorians) were known as Macednons (before they from the north in I think the Dryopes mountains, or somewhere near Macedonia.)
> Does anyone have an opinion on the Indo-European position of the Macedonians? Eould love to know- Michael
If it was not a dialect of Greek, it can't be said to have been "closest" to any Greek dialect, except in terms of areal affinities. The Aeolian dialects of Thessaly were its neighbours in historical times, but earlier Doric influence (as in Proto-Albanian) is also likely.
Piotr