Urheimat in Lithuania? (was Re: the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE)

[Ante Aikio]

On Sun, 2 Apr 2000, Robert Whiting wrote:

> Yes, and it would seem that Baltic (or one of its previous
> manifestations) has pretty much always been in contact with
> Uralic.  First we have the evidence of contact between PIE and
> PU, then there are the Old Iranian loans at the PFU level,

I would like to correct the above slightly. There are no Iranian loans in
Proto-Finno-Ugric; there are however some Pre-Aryan (and perhaps
Proto-Aryan) ones. Moreover, it is disputed whether there ever was a
Finno-Ugric proto-language (distinct from PU). If this was not the case
(as I believe it wasn't), the Aryan loans lacking in Samoyedic were
borrowed separately into and between the already differentiated
"FU" languages. Since most of the show irregular sound correspondence,
this seems likely.

> but
> there are also Slavic loans in all the FU languages (but not,
> apparently, inherited from the proto-language, and who can really
> tell the difference between Slavic and Baltic at this stage).
> Then there are the sprachbund effects leading right down to the
> present day when Baltic and Balto-Finnic are still in contact.

The Slavic borrowings seem to be mostly quite late, and evidence of
contacts between Proto-Slavic any branch of U is very scarce. But as
for Baltic, it seems to have always been in contact with Uralic, as
you say. And the same holds for Germanic, too.

 - Ante Aikio