--- tgpedersen <
tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh
> <gknysh@...> wrote:
> >
> >
> > --- tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> >
> > > In this case, given that Proto-Slavic was spoken
> in the Kiev
> > > culture, the ancestor language of that, spoken
> in Przeworsk and
> > > Zarubintsy, would be Proto-Proto-Slavic
> >
> > GK: The Kyiv culture was a new beginning. It
> did
> > not develop from either Przeworsk or Zarubyntsi,
> > though it assimilated some carriers thereof.
>
> But in that case, as a linguist I would like to
> know, how did the
> people of the Kyiv culture go about building this
> new language,
> Proto-Slavic?
****GK: New beginnings are rarely "a nichilo". Now
that Przeworsk and Zarubyntsi (and of course
Chernyakhiv)are seen as impossible prime antecedents
of Slavic material culture, the case for their
languages being proto-Slavic in whole or in part has
correspondingly dissipated. Since Kyivan culture has
strong affinities to the other so-called "forest
cultures" of eastern Europe correctly identified as
Baltic,that is also where one should search for the
prime influences on proto-Slavic. I understand that
linguists have actually done this for a condiderable
period (long before the "archaeological shift" re
Przeworsk/Chernyakhi videntities occurred). The most
promising approach apparently continues to be the
view that Baltic and Slavic developed out of
"Baltoslavic". The linguistic time frame is still
being discussed, but as a historian I can only note
that there are no indications of any sort about a
separate "Slavic" identity earlier than the 2nd c.CE.
I can say nothing about the length of the "period of
separation". Only that the process would have been
internal to earlier "forest cultures" and would not
have involved either Przeworsk, Chernyakhiv, or
Zarubyntsi, or the earlier Scythian culture, except
as, to some extent, "external" catalysts. Only after
much of Poland and Ukraine had become depopulated due
to the near disappearance of the Przeworsk and
Chernyakhiv Germanics did the Slavs move into the
vacated territories and enter history on a grand
scale.****
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