Talk:Proto-Balto-Slavic language

Balto-Slavic, was it?

If there are no common innovations after common Balto-Slavic period in West Baltic (Prussian) language and East Baltic languages, which would not include the Slavic group, then Baltic group is generally paraphyletic group. It means that the latest common ancestor of those languages are not exclusively the latest ancestors of them, but also of other group of languages (in this case Slavic), so, it seems that there was really Balto-Slavic proto-language. You can say that Slavic is dialect of proto-Baltic, but it just confirms the balto-slavic hypothesis, just with replacing Balto-Slavic with Baltic. Also it would not be wrong to say that Balts are basically conglomerate of non-Slavic speaking Balto-Slavs. It's just game of terminology. I don't really see why the problem is that Baltic in atiquity wasn't monophyletic group. Refix1997 (talk) 18:38, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Acute-short alternations in verb paradigms

Slavic and Lithuanian inflectional paradigms are usually strictly separated into those with an acuted root (accent paradigms a, 1, 3) and those without (accent paradigms b, 2, 4). But it occurred to me that the assignment of roots to either the acuted or non-acuted category can depend on the ending in some cases.

In the case of roots ending in a diphthong (including liquid diphthongs), there were alternations between long and short syllables based on the ending that follows. In the forms with a consonant-initial ending (e.g. the infinitive and s-aorist), the syllable would be long, while in the forms with a vowel-initial ending (e.g. thematic presents), the sonorant would have shifted to the next syllable, shortening the preceding one. Slavic has many verbs of this type, such as *pluti ~ *plovǫ "swim", *tęti ~ *tьnǫ "cut", *derti ~ *dьrǫ "tear", *biti ~ *bьjǫ "beat". If verbs like this had an acuted root, it would only surface with an acute in the forms containing a long syllable in Balto-Slavic. A vocalic ending would have removed the acuteness in the process of shortening the syllable, because acutes could not occur on short syllables (VRHC gives acute, VRHV doesn't). Consequently, sonorant-final acute verbs with simple thematic presents would have alternated between acute and non-acute.

I'm curious what consequences this had for various sound laws, in particular Dybo's and De Saussure's law. In the forms with consonantal endings, the acuted root would have blocked these sound laws, but in the forms with vowel-initial endings, they could operate. Does it lead to anomalous paradigms with different parts of the paradigm following different accent patterns (e.g. in Slavic, AP a in the infinitive and aorist but AP b in the present)? Are there accent discrepancies between different descendants as a result, one reflecting an acute root, the other a non-acute root? There are also consequences in the case of Hirt's law, where R̥HC would have retracted the accent but R̥HV wouldn't have. Has there been any mention of these alternations in diphthong-final acuted roots in linguistic sources? Rua (mew) 17:25, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Against Proto-Balto-Slavic

Short summary about why its fullish to think that way Note Im native Latvian Speaker also know German

Janncis (talk) 18:09, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

If these critiques are sourcable, they can of course be added, though they will have to be written out in full; also, on basic inspection it seems that many of these "refutations" are also based on misunderstandings of elementary historical linguistic concepts. E.g. what makes point 2 significant is not the typological fact that a close vowel is used for resolving PIE syllabic resonants (this is indeed shared with Germanic — and also Tocharian), but the specific choice of vowel, which is the same for Baltic and Slavic, different for Germanic and Tocharian. For point 3, loanwords into Finnic interestingly show that *š after *i *u did once exist in Baltic (Lit. liesas 'thin' corresponds to Finnish laiha < *laiša), and that this was simply reverted later (similar to Middle Indo-Aryan, where Old Indo-Aryan ṣ from RUKI merged back into plain s).

It also should be noted that Szemerenyi is not the only scholar to have defended Balto-Slavic; others have had other arguments which need to be all addressed.

Thirdly, all this discussion is the wrong place: this article is for the purpose of discussing Proto-Balto-Slavic as it was according to the theory that it did exist. The correct article for discussing counterarguments would be Balto-Slavic languages, the overview of this theory. (Perhaps much of this discussion should be moved over to the discussion page of that one.) --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 14:42, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

Looking now over your references, a few general notes:

• the articles you do link are quite old: from 1967 and 1981, and they wouldn't really pass for the current state of the field. There has been much discussion about Balto-Slavic since then, including contributions from recognized experts such as Frederik Kortlandt and Ranko Matasović (see our references on Balto-Slavic languages).

Reading Klimas (1967), I see that you had simply copied his writing (from Fig. 12 on) as if it were your own; this is unacceptable conduct, and I've hence removed this entirely.

Reading Mayer (1981), he seems to indeed also show confusion on what constitutes a common phonological innovation:

"But these languages do not share one single phonological innovation resulting in a new phoneme that exists in all of them on the one hand, yet is not to be found in other Indo-European languages on the other."

This is nonsense: a primary split (i.e. a change which does not result in a new phoneme: see Phonological change#Types) or a secondary split with unique conditioning are both perfectly valid types of common innovations. Actually, Mayer's logic which seemingly requires unique typological features, consistently applied, would not just eliminate (the phonological evidence for) the Balto-Slavic and Baltic groups, but also contrary to what he claims, also the likes of Germanic and Slavic — indeed probably every accepted group of IE languages. None of these is characterized by "a new phoneme that is not to be found in other IE languages"! E.g. he gives as an example Germanic *h from Grimm's Law, but as a phoneme this (ditto also *f, *θ) also exists in e.g. Greek and Iranian, just through different changes. Slavic *y = /ɨ/ likewise finds phonological equivalents from e.g. Romanian, Welsh and Tocharian. Hence this level of "firm evidence" disproves way too much.

(I would agree with most of his cautionary remarks about lexical evidence; but this is largely irrelevant, since there is phonological and grammatical evidence for Balto-Slavic after all.)

--Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 15:26, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

No dates/timeline

There is a total lack of estimated dates or a timeline of the developments discussed here is a major omission. Estimated dates, or ranges, are provided in comparable articles. Grant | Talk 00:43, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

If you have sources that give specific times for the changes, feel free to add them. Rua (mew) 07:48, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Derivation of OCS krava

The idea, here ascribed to E. Hill, goes in fact back at least to Matasović (cf. en.wiktionary), whom I hope he cited in his paper. The idea is phonologically convincing, however not so culturally, because it is extremely unusual that loans change their meaning. Moreover, what on earth should be the cultural background / reason for that loan? When and where should that have happened? Normally, loans take their designations with them, and rather the latter can later be changed phonologically. Thus, why can't we directly derive P-BalSlac *kárˀwāˀ from PIE *ḱr̥h₂wos? 2A02:8108:9640:AC3:2CC3:8F7F:E2E9:F04 (talk) 08:47, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Because the sound laws preclude such a derivation. A regular reflex of PIE *ḱr̥h₂wos already exists in PBSl. *śirwa-, which is attested in Old Prussian sirwis, and was also borrowed into Finnic and Samic. PBSl. *kárˀwāˀ could only go back to something like PIE *k(ʷ)órHweh₂, a completely different reconstruction. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:37, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Suggested references

Here are a few relevant papers that have not been used yet:

https://www.academia.edu/382815/The_phonology_of_Balto-Slavic

https://www.academia.edu/4453333/Reconstruction_of_Balto-Slavic_Personal_Pronouns_with_Emphasis_on_Accentuation_PhD_dissertation_University_of_Zadar_2006_

https://www.academia.edu/34288492/Phonological_evidence_for_a_Proto-Baltic_stage_in_the_evolution_of_East_and_West_Baltic

https://www.academia.edu/5777444/Historical_phonology_in_service_of_subgrouping._Two_laws_of_final_syllables_in_the_common_prehistory_of_Baltic_and_Slavonic

https://www.academia.edu/3884660/Die_sigmatischen_Modus-Bildungen_der_indogermanischen_Sprachen._Erste_Abhandlung_Das_baltische_Futur_und_seine_Verwandten

Interestingly, Ronald Kim writes in the first article listed: "Rather, it appears that the three branches West Baltic, East Baltic, and Slavic have developed from a dialect continuum which gradually became differentiated during the last centuries BCE and the first half of the 1st millennium CE." Considering the close similarity of the three branches to each other and to Proto-Balto-Slavic reconstructions, I agree that dating the breakup of Proto-Balto-Slavic to the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1500 BC; I believe this idea goes back to Kortlandt, like the whole four-period chronology at Proto-Slavic § Introduction) is completely implausible and not supported by any evidence. (Therefore, there's no compelling reason to identify Proto-Balto-Slavic with the Trzciniec culture, and the Milograd and Zarubintsy cultures are much more plausible archaeological correlates.) The third paper makes it plausible that a Proto-Baltic stage may have existed after all, but its breakup is unlikely to have postdated that of Proto-Balto-Slavic by a long time. (Baltic might have diverged from Proto-Balto-Slavic in, say, 300 BC and broken up only a century later, possibly, for example.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:28, 18 November 2019 (UTC)