Re: [tied] Greek+Slavic

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, mkapovic@... wrote:
>
>> But 3. sg. = 3. pl. is hardly a Proto-Baltic innovation... Even in
> Old
>> Lith. you have e~sti and esą~.
>
> I suppose ą~ is nasal a with circumflex although I can't see that on
> my screen. Where is that attested, not as the plural of the
> participle, but as a third plural finite verb form? I know, and am
> inclined to accept, Cowgill's identification of the Nom.pl. of the nt-
> participle vedaN~ as being in reality the 3pl *wedhont(i), transferred
> from narrative usage, but if there is no other place for the 3pl in
> Lith. or any of the other Baltic languages this can have been its
> place in Proto-Baltic already. That means there are no finite non-
> singular third person forms in Baltic - unless your " esą~ " is just
> that. I can't find anything about any such thing, but there may well
> be new information I do not have. Could you be more specific, please?

Sorry, I was writing from my memory. I know I saw Old Lith. esaN~ quoted
as the 3. pl. somewhere but I don't know where. Could be I'm (or my source
which I don't remember) wrong.

> If there is no such finite form, it ought to be recognized as a major
> common innovation of Baltic that the third sg verb forms are used of
> all numbers.

OK. I don't know what is the situation in Old Prussian. I guess there's no
trace of 3. pl. there as well.

>Since that innovation is not shared by Slavic, the latter
> does not appear to be a branch of Baltic. I do not see what else one
> could possibly mean by these terms.

OK. I never meant "Baltic" in the proper way we use it today.

>> Anyway, one could imagine Slavic being a
>> "Baltic" dialects which preserved the distinction.
>> By saying Slavic is just a Baltic dialect, I do not mean to propose
> that
>> we can derive Slavic from Lithuanian or something like that,
> ofcourse. I'm
>> just putting down the projected importance of Slavic in the past.
>
> Are you doing anything other than replacing the term Balto-Slavic by
> Baltic?

That's it :) It's just a word trick so it would be easier to understand
that what is Slavic today could have been just a small tribe or a number
of not so important tribes among other Balto-Slavic tribes. Today we tend
to unconsciously project the importance of Slavic (hence the name
Balto-Slavic) into the past even though it may have been just a little
tribe. Like the Romans in the beginnings.

>And what's the benefit of that if there are Pan-Baltic
> exclusive innovations?

Are there? Many would say that there was no separate Proto-Baltic and that
Balto-Slavic should be divided to Western B., Eastern B. and Slavic. I
don't have a firm opinion in this matter though.

> I guess your real point is to stress the closeness of Baltic and
> Slavic and the reality of a Balto-Slavic unity. I would agree
> completely with that, but that can be said without changing the terms
> we use which would only cause confusion.

Ofcourse. I don't really want to do that. It was just a word trick, as I
said. My real point, as I said, was to stress that Slavs are really
probably a lot like Romans. They were an unimportant little tribe (or a
couple of tribes), one of many Balto-Slavic tribes, just like the Romans
were one of many Italic tribes. But still we do not call Italic languages
- Italo-Latin just because Latin became very important later. And all of
this was to stress, answering George's question, that I do not believe in
some Slavic famous long history or something like that.

>I have always found it
> strange that so much effort could be wasted on a crusade of
> dramatizing the little differences between Baltic and Slavic when the
> much greater difference between Irish and Welsh is never used to
> assign Goidelic and British Celtic to different IE branches.

I agree. I think it hilarious that some people even today do not accept
Balto-Slavic unity. I mean, one only has to look at the accentual systems
- is it really possible that Čakavian and Old Russian could have the same
place of the accent in mobile nouns as in Lithuanian by accident? Some
accident, I'd say.

Mate