[tied] Re: Why did Proto-Germanic break up?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

> 22-10-03 15:56, tgpedersen wrote:

> > Yes, but hold on here. The expansion of the Germani and their
> > language in the standard model, as far as I know, took place in
> > historical times in Britain, Iceland and Germany south of the
> > Weisswurstäquator (or the Benrath line?). Northern (Jastorf)

Germany

> > and Southern Scandinavia by definition would then according to

the

> > standard model before that time have spoken a homogenous

language.

> > And the development of "efficient socio-political structures" in
> > general leads to less diversity, not more (cf. the connection

between

> > Celtic factionalism and the diversity of Celtic languages), or

the

> > multitude of languages on the Balkan and the Balkanic politics

(no

> > value judgement intended) of that area.
>
> Leaving alone the Balkans (see, however, Jim Rader's posting --
> "multitude" is an overstatement), the creation of large political
> organisms does not necessarily result in linguistic homogeneity

(note

> that we aren't talking about modern-style national states). Even if

the

> range of a single language expands in that way, initial homogeneity

will

> soon be followed by regional differentiation and increasing

diversity --

> after all, the Romance language owe their origin to the political
> success of Rome.
>
> Of course the early Germani were not politically unified, and they

did

> not build a single empire extending from Britain to Ukraine. Rather

than

> that, they learnt to organise themselves into intertribal

confederacies

> and then into a number of large territorial units with some kind of
> hierarchic political structure -- let's call them kingdoms. They
> expanded to fill any political void that happened to be available.

I see

> no reason why that should have produced greater uniformity rather

than

> increasing heterogeneity. Ostrogoths were Ostrogoths and Franks

were

> Franks, and the more time elapsed, the more different they were.
>

All true, but not relevant. I'll recap:

phase 1) Germanic is one language, Proto-Germanic.

event: Germanic breaks up.

phase 2) Germanic consists of three languages (presumably), Proto-
West, East, North.

phase 1) is before event is before phase 2).

Now the question is: before the breakup, was Proto-Germanic spoken in
all of Northern Germany and Southern Scandinavia (option 1) or was it
spoken in a much smaller area from where they expanded into NGer and
SScand?

Torsten