Talk:Balto-Slavic languages
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[edit] Position of Common Slavic
what I've been reading mostly as the most probable is the Ivanov/Toporov theory presented in the 1960s, by which Balto-Slavic separated directly into Early Proto-Slavic, Eastern Baltic and Western Baltic. Before the geographical division (probably caused by Goths), there was some kind of dialect continuum, on whose periphery there was this innovative dialect that Common Slavic later emerged from.
Common Slavic (up to 7th century) was spoken on an immense territory on which it expanded so fast that there are basically no detectable dialect features in it - this was probably because it was koine of Avar state. A thin millitary aristocracy layer of Avars was eventually completely Slavicized (later sources such as De administrando imperio often confuse Slavs with Avars, but earlier make a difference such as when describing Slavic-Avar attack on Constantinople).
That vastly expanded CS probably erased most of BSl. idioms, that left little or no traces (Avar itself left almost no traces in Slavic), leaving only CS, Eastern and Western Baltic. That theory is supported not only by historical inditions, but also by the fact that one cannot reconstruct Proto-Baltic language; Eastern and Western Baltic diverge among themselves so much as every one of them individually from CS, and there are basically no non-trivial exclusive isoglosses among Baltic languages, that are not secondary and that can be faithfully arranged chronologically (i.e. represent common development). Proto-Baltic article is a joke (it's been a stub for..how long?). These new "theories" that Western and Eastern Baltic independently stem from PIE (each repesenting a separate PIE "branch"), and that exhibited parallel development and converged, are just pathetic attempts to evade undisputable correspondences with Slavic. OTOH, for many important exclusive Balto-Slavic isoglosses, relative chronology can be set very easily!
The current state of the article, which focuses primarily on approving/"disapproving" Balto-Slavic theory, is particularly misleading. These comparison lists like Sanskrit-Latvian (hey this was new, usually these these are Lithuanian-Sanskrit, or Lithuanian-Sumerian, Turkish-Sumerian and similar ^_^) have nothing to do with the article theme. And it was even conveniently lemmatized; Latvian with Balto-Slavic infinitive suffix -ti, Sanskrit in 3PS PAI ^_^
Lituanus articles with their original research theories are really no "arguments" (Slavic-Albanian-Messapian - oh lord, after that, what credibility does Harvey Mayer have left?), most notably because they present absolutely no reasonable alternative to account for common isoglosses.
One would think upon reading this article, and also on Baltic languages ("Most linguists believe that the Baltic languages diverged from Proto-Indo-European separately from other language groups." - what a dirty lie), that the current communis opinio upon BSl. unity is that it's very existence is quite conservative topic by itself, when on the other hand the truth is quite the opposite: BSl. forms are cited in notable books, papers and journals, BSL. reflexes of PIE roots are treated always together (e.g. by Derksen in IEED project), and correspondences are being drawn to relevant Slavic dialects (Chakavian/Slovincian).
But, there are still many imporant articles to be created first (there's not even one on Winter's law, geez) --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:01, 25 April 2008 (UTC) And also "SIL" as a reference - this is the geographical distribution, which doesn't necessarily correspond with cladistic tree reconstructed by comparative method. E.g., Slavic languages are traditionally divided into East/West/South - but there is no "Proto-South Slavic" or "Proto-West Slavic"; there are numerous isoglosses that connect e.g. Croatian dialects with Slovak, and one tries to reconstruct "Proto-South-Slavic" word (e.g. on the basis of reflex of yat) you end up with Late Proto-Slavic reconstruction. So SIL's division is really a matter of tradition, not an argument per se. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:10, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
