--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:
>
> Ahem... So as not to let this get lost in the shuffle
> amongst a host of probable and acceptable theses:
> --- tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> > According to my scenario, Proto-Germanic was spoken
> > in the Przeworsk
> > culture,
>
> ****GK: Still waiting for proof... No problem if by
> "Proto-Germanic" you mean a pre-Grimm shift dialect,
> shared to a large extent with Oksywie, Jastorf,
> Poeneshti-Lukashovka, Zarubintsi, and some other
> areas,including those on the north side of the Baltic.
> Problem if by "Proto-Germanic" you mean a
> Grimm-shifted dialect initially occurring in Przeworsk
> alone.*****
I think we agree on this, sorta. It seemed to me that I had to follow
the principle that the 'Proto-' title is reserved for the latest
occurring ancestor of all the 'known' (in a linguistically useful
sense) languages of that family. That makes the languages of the
cultures you mention siblings (titled 'Para-') and parents of that
Przeworsk language. And I think it was not so much Grimm-shifted, as
Grimm-shifting, ie. it was in the process of shifting, probably in the
sense that there was an upper crust who had Grimm-shifted, and that
the Grimm-shifted words became shibboleths in relationship to the
surrounding para-Germanic languages, a situation in a sense mirrored
in Northern Germany (until the refugee situation wiped out much of the
dialect) where those who mattered said pf-, ts-, k(h)-, and those who
didn't said p-, t-, k-, ie the Hochdeutsch/Plattdeutsch situation.
Torsten