----- Original Message -----
From: Juozas
Rimas
To: phoNet@egroups.com
Sent:
Saturday, April 22, 2000 1:02 PM
Subject: Re: [phoNet] Lithuanian/Russian:
FIXED
Then you'd have to say that the history of
Dutch began when it separated from Afrikaans (or rather when Afrikaans separated
from it, but a split is a split whoever does the splitting). The trouble is that
Dutch would look exactly the same today, not a whit more modern or archaic, if
Afrikaans had never come into being.
Or you could say that the history of
German began in the early Middle Ages, but then reflect that Yiddish split off
the German branch more recently (which should have a rejuvenating effect on
German) -- and if you attempt to date the Dutch/German split, the exercise
will give you a headache.
How old is English?
Older than Lithuanian, under your definition, since it separated from the rest
of West Germanic in the mid fifth century. How
old is Albanian? When did it last split of from any other language (Dacian? but
what is Dacian? and why should the knowledge of such extralinguistic HISTORICAL
accidents affect our assessment of the antiquity of
Albanian?)??
Latvian is less archaic than Lithuanian?
It depends. In what respect? Literary Latvian retains the old pronunciation of
Baltic *a:, it reflects the original Baltic intonations more
faithfully than Lithuanian does, though on the other hand it shows innovations
like the reduction of unstressed final syllables. What about spectacular lexical
archaisms in Latvian, like gùovs 'cow' (Lith.
kárvė), or asinis (pl.) 'blood' (Lithuanian
kraũjas)? How can you balance all the innovations and
retentions in a principled way to determine OBJECTIVELY
which of the two languages is more archaic?
The very definition of "distinct language" is far
from straightforward and not uncontradicted. Whether Swedish and Norwegian (or
Polish and Kashubian, Hindi and Urdu, Bulgarian and Macedonian, Serbian and
Croatian) are the same language or two separate languages is partly a political
question, and the answer depends crucially on extralinguistic considerations.
For me as a historical linguist the history of a
language begins as far back as I'm able to trace it. Since all the IE languages
can be traced back to PIE, that's where ALL their histories begin as far as I'm
concerned.
Piotr
I agree that it's a bit of stereotype too. I believe the history
of a
language starts when it splits off of its ancestor language. I don't
know
when the Slavic ancestor language split into Western, Eastern and
Southern
Slavic groups but I've read Russian, Byelorrusian and Ukranian
emerged from
the Eastern group in the 14th-15th centuries. So the history of
Russian
must've started about 500 years ago. Sergei?
As to the Baltic
ancestor language, it split into Prussian and
Lithuanian-Latvian groups in
the 4th-3rd centuries BC. Lithuanian and
Latvian began to live their own life
in the 5th-7th centuries AD. Why
Latvian is less archaic than Lithuanian
then? And what about Albanian? Sorry
for any mistakes and possible
off-topic.
Juozas Rimas