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

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/16/00 12:29:13 AM Mountain Standard Time,
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi writes:

<< "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).

-- you're quite right about that.  I had forgotten about Tocharian.

 >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

-- this seems to be a terminological problem here.  That's pretty much what I
was trying to say.  Pardon the infelicities of expression!

>The example of Lithuanian would seem to argue
>against this.

-- it's a matter of degree.  Lithuanian certainly changed far less; but it
still changed.

>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.

-- however, it's not just Lithuanian.  Apart from the other Baltic languages,
there's the example of Slavic  -- which, while not quite as conservative, is
still notably so.

>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.

-- its a question of degree.  There are certainly substrata in Baltic, but
not to nearly the same degree as in Germanic.  The number of lexical items
which can be traced to PIE is proportionately much larger and Baltic that in,
say, Germanic or Greek.

 >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).

-- one has to make a balance of probabilities in these cases. Even the case
of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England, which is about as complete a case of
linguistic replacement as exists in the historical record, not all the river
and place names were changed.  River names in particular seem to persist.