Re: [tied] Baltic-Slavic disintegration

--- Alexander Stolbov <astolbov@...> wrote:

> Sorry, I was in a hurry today and posted unfinished
> letter instead of saving
> it as a draft.

*****GK: That was obvious enough. Waiting for the rest
was no problem.******

>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Alexander
> Stolbov" <astolbov@...>
> > wrote:
> > In all probability Slavs and Balts parted
> > > earlier than in the second quarter of the 1st
> mill. BC.
> >
> > GK: The argument for this position can only
> be a linguistic one.
> > Neither history nor archaeology support it.
>
>
> What do you mean?
> 1) History and archeology have any arguments against
> it. If so please share
> them.
> or
> 2) There are no direct historical and archaeological
> evidences and we must
> relay here only on linguistic arguments.

*****GK: I don't understand your first point. I would
support the second.*****

>
>
> >(GK) So what is the linguistic
> > argument, and how do you relate it to time and
> space?
>
> I don't know what glottochronology suggest here.
> Does anybody know?

*****GK: Would glottochronology be useful here?****

>
> However there are some thoughts which allow to
> belive that this
> _probability_ is not low.
> The degree of similarity of two pairs - Baltic with
> Slavic and Iranian with
> Indic - is approximately the same.

Some scolars

> think that the first pair is
> more closely related, other think that the second
> pair has more similarity.
> If so the time of dividing of Balto-Slavic and
> Indo-Iranian must be
> approximately the same.

*****GK: Why? This argument is too abstract. I would
be interested in a list of differentia which could not
conceivably have developed over the 600 years or so of
my favourite Balto-Slavic "separation" scenario,
currently based on historical and archaeological data
only.*****

> We know that in the middle of the 2nd mill. BC
> existed Srubnaya culture and
> a number of cultures of the Andronovo community
> (Petrovka, Alexeevka,
> Fedorovo cultures). All of them are confidently
> classified either as Iranian
> or as Indo-Aryan.

*****GK: Or (in the case of the Zrubna-Srubnaya) as
BOTH, at least by some.*****

Thus we can think that since the

> Late Bronze Age (c. 1600
> BC) the Indo-Iranian community didn't exist anymore.

*****GK: Here I agree with the view that the
separation was approximately 1,000 yrs older.****

> The terms from the
> Mitanny texts are recognized as Indo-Aryan (not
> Indo-Iranian) that we can be
> sure that by 1400 BC the Indic languages had
> separated from the Iranian
> ones.

*****GK: Quite.****

>
> Thus we may expect that the Baltic and Slavic
> languages separated some
> earlier than in 750 BC.

*****GK: Again: why? Could BaltoSlavic not have
remained a unified whole of sorts much longer than
Indo-Iranian?*****

I would not be surprised if

> this happened between
> 1600 and 1200 BC.
>
> As to the region of Balto-Slavic disintegration I'm
> not ready now to defend
> the precise localisation. Perhaps somewhere between
> Volga and Dnieper.

*****GK: Which cultures of the region would you
tentatively identify with each group?*****

>
> Alexander
>
>

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