Are the Baltic language groups related to the Slavic language groups.
Are the Slavic and Baltic language groups related because of geographic proximity or did they share a common origin or root. This debate cannot concretely be solved by linguistic analysis because the Slavs and Baltic people live too close. Therefore, no matter which way you analysis from a language stand point, you will see words and structure that cross; and we will not know if it’s a proto type Slavic word that made it into the Baltic language groups or if the two groups were one and split long ago. One thing that could give us a better clue is if we look at the genetic closeness between the two groups. If they are genetically related beyond what can be accounted through mating in the last 2000 years I would say that they had a common origin. Although not linguistically connected I think we have to look for other ways to determine the depth of commonality between these the Slavic and Baltic peoples.
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May 24, 2007at 2:44 am
There is no question that they share a common origin - they both are descendants of the Indo-European language. The question is, whether they were distinct already as Indo-European dialects, or some more or less vague unity existed some time after the final split of the proto-language. I think the first, though most of their history they had quite close influence to each other, so that the overall idea behind both languages, as well as the language techniques, are generally the same.
The genetic proximity among peoples is another story. Say, before the arrival of Slavs, the Baltic tribes occupied a territory from the former East Prussia to the east of Moscow. All of the eastern Balts have been later assimilated and become Slavs - parts of Byelorussian and Russian nations. So…
May 24, 2007at 5:21 am
Your right I should have been clearer. They share a common Indo-European heritage. The quetion is was there a proto-Baltic-Slavic language or did they come from different branches from the Indo-European tree. Also when was the split. Genetics is also interesting, except for the Estonians who are not Indo-European, the Baltic people I think basically divided away from the Slavs only to come back.
May 29, 2007at 3:28 pm
I think, Indo-European linguistics in many aspects has come to a gnoseological end: there are so many aspects of the Indo-European prehistory that are lost forever, since, unlike in palaeontology, there is no hope to discover some day documents on the early history of all these language groups. So, we can reconstruct the proto-language itself, because we have evidence from its descendants and some ideas about the system of the language, but such details as the one you have mentioned seem to remain without answer in principle. Only the time machine will be able to help ;-(
May 29, 2007at 3:35 pm
And as to the Estonians: the Uralic motherland was much more eastwards, so the tribes that lived there before the arrival of the Finns (in the broad sense) should have spoken some language
which, again, is lost forever. Likewise throughout the entire Northern Europe: e. g. which language was spoken by the non-indo-european ancestors of the Scandinavians? In the West, we have picts, basques, iberians, tartessians, while the non-Mediterranean areas of Europe remain areas of pure speculations: we cannot link archeological evidence to linguistics simply because those languages have left no traces.
May 30, 2007at 2:36 am
I think with linquistic forensics for languages that have died, and computer technology for sound replication or estimates extrapolated you can resurrect at least in a frankensteinian way in the lab some dead languages.