The Neolithic Hypothesis (Latin et al.)

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 4/6/99 7:20:56 PM, jrader at m-w.com wrote:

<I don't know what encyclopedias or general references Mr. Long is
taking this information from, but either he or his sources have some
basic distinctions muddled...  There is never any confusion about which
texts are OCS and which are Old Russian.  It is NOT the case that
"the first Russian appears of course in OCS texts,..>>

Not that it really makes any difference to the point I was making!!! IN FACT
if Russian was discernible from OCS at an early date that just makes it more
likely that Slavic was already well diverged by 860.  Just a reminder: my
point was that there is no direct evidence that OCS was to any great degree
comprehensible to the Wends,etc. etc.  If you can with your erudition help me
out with that I'd appreciate it.  In the meantime, here's why I wrote what I
wrote:

"Although there is some controversy concerning the possible independent,
native developement of writing in Russian, it is generally agreed that
writing was introduced to Russia with...the liturgical language that...was
Old Church Slavonic.  At this period OCS and Old Russian was presumably [sic]
mutually comprehensible, yet there was still clear differences between them,
namely the criterial differences between (East and South)...in such writing
the attempt was made to write Church Slavonic, avoiding local East Slavonic
dialect peculiarities.  In practice, Russian monks writing these manuscripts
often erred in allowing East Slavonic forms to creep into the text...  The
coexistence of East Slavonic and South Slavonic forms from the earliest Old
Russian. is one of the salient charactersistics of the language... Both
alphabets [Glagolitic and Cyrillic] providing a good fit to the phonemic
system of OCS,... [but U]nfortunately the Cyrillic alphabet had no way of
distinguishing between the plosive and fricative sounds... [that for example
may have distinguished Eastern Slavic dialects, i.e., north and south] so
textual evidence is inconclusive." - Bernard Comrie, TWMLs, p 322 et seq

This seems to say to me that the earliest texts written in Russia [if not the
earliest text, singular - which Comrie does not mention] were written in OCS.
 And that E. Slavonic was mixed in.  Not knowing better, I believed him until
I saw what you wrote.  Now - informed by you - I believe he is terribly wrong
and "muddled," just as you say.

Regards,
Steve Long