--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alex" <alxmoeller@...> wrote:
> willemvermeer wrote:
> >
> >
> > To give an example of an issue that should be addressed: what
> > adherent of the transdanubian continuity thesis has ever provided
a
> > plausible motivation for the presence of Arumanian in northern
Greece
> > and southern Albania? On the basis of the Ohrid thesis it is easy:
> > Arumanian has remained closest to what one might call the
Urheimat,
> > whereas more northerly dialects have moved out to take advantage
of
> > opportunities offered elsewhere, e.g. the lush soils of Muntenia.
> I am afraid you ommited something. The linguistic data means the
Aromanains
> splited from DacoRomanians somewhere in the VI _or_ X century. My
personal
> opinion is that they have split in the X century. My arguments here
are of
> historical nature and not of linguistical nature because the
fonetic changes
> between VI-X century are not traceable.
> Arguments:
> -until X century is not Vlah mentioned by Byzantins
> -in the X century are comming the Hungarians who drove out the
Vlachs which
> have been in Panonia.
The obvious fact that there was a Common Rumanian period and that the
break-up of Rumanian was relatively late is one of the hard facts
that have to be accounted for. Indeed it is the existence of the
Common Rumanian phase that gives rise to the problem of the Rumanian
Urheimat. There is no disagreement here.
The disagreement is with the idea that transdanubian speakers of
Rumanian in the ninth century (assuming for the sake of the argument
that they have been properly authenticated), would prove that the
Rumanian Urheimat was somewhere transdanubian. They simply don't and
can't, just like the Serbian-speaking majority we find in the
Vojvodina *now* does not and cannot prove that the Vojvodina was
predominantly Serbian-speaking *in the seventeenth century*, or that
Serbian originated in the Vojvodina, or anything along those lines.
In the eighth century the power of the Avars was steadily weakening
and after 795 they just evaporated. In the meantime the Bulgarian
overlords of the lower Danube area had started putting together the
rudiments of a genuine state; commercial concerns are in evidence as
early as the peace treaty that was concluded with Byzance in 716,
pointing to constructive societal values that had not been very
conspicuous during the preceding centuries. Clearly there were
opportunities to be grasped. There was room for expansion, notably
for mountain pastoralists because we can be sure both the Slavic and
the Bulgarian population of the First Bulgarian State and surrounding
areas rarely ventured into the mountains, where they would have
perished miserably for lack of the skills necessary for survival.
Put differently, starting with the eighth century there were good
reasons for people, and particularly for people specialized in
mountain pastoralism, to migrate into areas that had become
attractive as a consequence of the weakening of the Avars and the
strengthening of the First Bulgarian State.
I would like to stress again that I regard the matter as basically
open, although it would be disingenuous to hide my conviction that an
Urheimat in the Ohrid area has better credentials than one in
Transylvania. But if we seriously want to clinch the matter (and I
for one am not sure it can be clinched) we should stop relying on the
type of smokescreen reasoning that projects ninth-century condition
back to the middle of the first millennium.
Willem