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

[Robert Whiting]

On Mon, 13 Mar, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

>whiting at cc.helsinki.fi writes:

>>Isn't this at variance with the "innovative core -- archaizing
>>periphery" model?

>-- not really, although you do have a point.

I guess my real point was that if it is so simple surely someone
would have cottoned on to it a lot sooner:  All you have to do is
find the most conservative IE language and, if it is free from
significant substratum influences, then hey presto, there is the
IE Urheimat.

"Innovative core -- archaizing periphery" is really an expression
of the wave model of linguistic change and, of course, the "core"
and "periphery" can be different for each change.  The wave model
says that linguistic change spreads like the waves from an object
dropped in a liquid, gradually dying out with increasing distance
from the center.  Thus there will be a core or central area where
the change is complete, transitional areas where the change is
less complete, and relic areas that the change does not reach at
all.  And, as I said, how this model applies depends on where the
particular change started so there is nothing about the Urheimat
that *has* to make it the most innovative or the most
conservative with respect to the proto-language.

>Eg., the Baltic languages (and the Slavic) undergo satemization,
>a late development in the eastern IE dialects.

A slight terminological quibble:  You can't say that satemization
was a development in the eastern IE dialects because Tocharian
didn't undergo it.  What you have to say is that the core area
for satemization was I-Ir. and that the easternmost "dialect" of
IE (Tocharian) was already isolated from this core area when this
change took place (i.e., was no longer part of the IE dialect
continuum).

>What seems to have happened is that at one point they _were_ in
>the "innovative core", but that subsequent to the final breakup
>of PIE they became extremely conservative; Baltic more so than
>Slavic.

The evidence fairly clearly shows that both Baltic and Slavic
were transitional areas in both the satemization (palatal
assibilation) and RUKI palatization changes that had their core
in I-Ir (although RUKI is more generalized in Slavic than in
Baltic).  Essentially all this shows is that Baltic and Slavic
were still in fairly close contact with I-Ir. in contrast to
Greek, Italic, Germanic and points west which were not affected
at all by these changes (relic areas).  In short, all the other
IE stocks have already broken off or are simply out of range
(which is not quite the same thing as they could still be at the
other end of a dialect continuum) before this change.  And
conservatism after this point indicates that the language was
consistently a relic area in further changes originating in the
dialect continuum

Expressed in terms of a tree model, it sounds very much like a
scenario that Steve Long proposed:  At any node on the tree,
there is a non-innovating branch and other branches.  If we follow
the non-innovating branch from each node, at the bottom of the
tree we arrive at a language that is practically identical to PIE
(in this case, Lithuanian).  Now everyone said 'no, no, that
can't be right because actually all branches innovate, just in
different ways.'  The example of Lithuanian would seem to argue
against this.  Nodes in a tree must be based on some comparative
linguistic information.  The only such information that is useful
is some innovation that appears in one branch and not in the
other.  Shared retentions don't propagate either as waves or
trees.  They just stay where they were left, like a well-trained
dog.  Of course the fact that Lithuanian was always on the
non-innovating branch (or least innovative branch if you prefer)
after satemization and RUKI (and only partly on the innovating
branch even there; sort of holding on to the end of the branch
with one paw) says nothing about where it was located
geographically.

Now someone is going to say that it's against the law of averages
for Lithuanian to have always been on the non-innovating branch.
And of course it is.  But the point is that *something* has to
be; if not Lithuanian, then something else.  It is equally
against the law of averages for a team or an individual to win a
single elimination tournament; but someone always does.  In the
IE superbowl, Lithuanian is apparently the winner.  But that
still doesn't say anything specific about where it started out
geographically.

>That's where the absense of substratal influence comes in.  The
>degree of retention of the PIE lexicon is extremely high compared
>to, say, Hittite.

Yes, absence of substratum influences would be useful in showing
either (a) the language was in its original home, (b) the
language moved into a previously uninhabited area, (c) the
language does not accept loanwords, or (d) the speakers of the
language drove off or killed all the original inhabitants before
there was any significant linguistic contact.  But is it clear
that there is no substratum influence?  There are a number of
Balto-Finnic loanwords in Baltic and a considerably larger number
of Baltic loanwords in Balto-Finnic.  Looks like about what one
would expect if Baltic were a superstratum language over Western
Finnic.  Just because there wasn't an unknown substratum, as
there apparently was in Germanic, that provided a lot of words of
unknown origin to the language doesn't mean that there wasn't
some substratum.

>There's also the lack of non-Baltic river names and other
>features in the area of Baltic speech (and the area where it was
>historically attested).

Again, useful for indicating that (a) the language was in its
original home, (b) the language moved into a previously
uninhabited area, (c) the speakers of the language
systematically renamed or calqued all river names in their own
language, or (d) the speakers of the language drove off or killed
all the original inhabitants before they could learn the original
names of the topographical features (i.e., no period of
linguistic contact).

I'm not trying to be difficult just for the sake of being
difficult, but rather to point out that while what you propose is
an arguable hypothesis, there are a lot of other arguable
hypotheses that have to be falsified before it could be accepted
as *the* hypothesis.  That is the problem with historical
linguistics in prehistory.  Genes don't equate to language on a
one-to-one basis; material culture doesn't equate to language on
a one-to-one basis.  The only thing that identifies language on a
one-to-one basis is written remains (that can be read) and once
you have that, you aren't in prehistory anymore.

>>following this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion,
>>Lithuania is the Urheimat.

>-- I'd say it's _close_ to the Urheimat, relatively speaking.

So would I, but it's all a question of what it's relative to.
I'd say it's definitely closer to the Urheimat than the fringes
of the Gobi Desert are.

>If the Urheimat is the Ukraine, then it isn't very far to the
>Baltic.  And once you're up in the Baltic forests, you're very
>much "out of the way".

Tell me about it :)

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi