--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alexandru_mg3" <alexandru_mg3@...>
wrote:
> Willem wrote:
> "No Balkan language is autochthonous in any absolute sense. "
>
> Willem,
> You mixed again here ethnic and political reasons with the
> linguistic facts playing also with different timeframes. Doing this
> you completely ignore the linguistic situation around 0 - 500 AC in
> Balkans:
>
I think I was quite clear, but I'll try some more.
No Indo-European language is autochthonous, simply because the
Balkans were not part of the Indo-European Urheimat. Every Indo-
European language now spoken on the Balkans arrived at some point in
time which could be specified if sufficient information were
available. Autochthony is always a relative notion, particularly in
Europe, where nearly all languages now spoken are obviously
intrusive.
When I say that autochthony is a relative notion I mean something
like the following. Albanian, which was present in the area in late
Roman times at the latest (but in all likelihood significantly
earlier) is clearly autochthonous with respect to Slavic, which
arrived in the mid sixth century at the very earliest. On the other
hand Slavic is autochthonous with respect to Hungarian, etcetera.
As soon as one narrows down the area one studies, things tend to
become very complicated and contradictory. Greek, for example, is
clearly autochthonous with respect to most other Balkan languages,
but most of the Greek now spoken in northern Greece has arrived in
the area within living memory. Or: along the Croatian coast Latin was
autochthonous with respect to Slavic, but the Italian dialects that
were spoken in many of the towns in the nineteenth century were quite
recent and no continuation of local Latin so that Croatian was
autochthonous with respect to them. Many similar examples could be
added.
It goes without saying that the substrata that live on in Greek,
Albanian and Romanian were autochthonous with respect to the Indo-
European languages that absorbed them, but chances are that they
continue that language of the early agriculturalists that was
intrusive too. In this connection it is often difficult for outsiders
to follow the type of discourse that identifies Romanian both with
the substratum and with the glories of the Roman empire.
I hope I have made myself clear enough now.
Willem