--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh wrote:
>>> GK: This is where I have a problem. The area of
>>> "Western" Romance eventually produced more than 1
>>> Western Romance population. There seems little doubt
>>> that something similar might well have happened (or
>>> was already happening) in the East prior to the
>>> Avar-Slavic invasion.
>>
>> (MI) Why that?!
>
> *****GK: From that comment one might infer that you
> strongly disagree with what I stated.
Not "strongly disagree". :-)
Just putting on a kind of timeline on successive splits
and hinting some causes. Around 300 a.D. one cannot speak
about differentiated Romance (in Eastern and Western) and
the split of Eastern Romance in Proto-Dalmatian and Proto-
Balkan Romance is to be dated very aproximately during the
VIth century.
> [...] And 2 is certainly "more than 1" (:=))).
Well, it depends on order relationship, but in usual cases
"certainty" is the right word. :-)
>> (MI) The split-up of Eastern Romance into two diasystems is
>> usually dated a couple of centuries afterwards.
>
> *****GK: What is the argument against these two
> systems undergoing further differentiation and giving
> us eventually a situation similar to, say, that of the
> Iberian peninsula multiplied by two?*****
Actually, they didn't. The only two Eastern Romance languages
we are aware of are Dalmatian and Romanian. Southern Romanian
dialects and Dacoromanian are structurally belonging to the same
Romanian diasystem, even with split occurring about 10 centuries
ago, in a troubled history zone as the Balkans. Your question is
of the type "what if"; one should wonder why should there have
been some supplementary split in subsystems in case of no other
people invading Balkans, since the real case showed up the split
in different independent subsystems didn't occur in less favorable
conditions.
Out of that, the convergence areas are clear enough, there is
no reason to suppose they would have split into real different
diasystems (that is: different main languages).
Regards,
Marius Iacomi