Re: Latvian Language Older Than Lithuanian?
- From: holman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Eugene Holman)
- Date: Tue, 30 May 2006 13:12:35 +0300
In article <1148961652.350854.209850@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
lorad474@xxxxxx wrote:
Maybe.. Anyway. it's something that I have been looking at for a number
of years... initially because of geographic location. Then because
Meyers also thought so.
Problem. The Indo-European speaking agriculturalists who are the ancestors
of the Balts entered the sparsely populated Baltic region from the south
east, mostly from what is now Belarus. The older population of this vast
area, Finno-Ugric speakers, had lived by foraging, so the
agriculture-based alternative introduced by the Balts meant a cultural
revolution in the area. The Balts intermarried with the Finno-Ugric
speakers, and the degree to which they were assimilated is reflected in
today's realities:
? Lithuania - full language shift and cultural assimilation of the
indigenous inhabitants to the Indo-European speakers, with no sign of the
earlier Finno-Ugric speaking population except a few loanwords and
hydronyms.
? Latvia - full languge shift and cultural assimilation of the indigenous
inhbaitants to the Indo-European speakers, with traces of the earlier
Finno-Ugric population evident in the dominant physical anthropology as
well as in a clear Finno-Ugric substratum in Latvian that increases the
further northward one goes, particularly to the north of what was once a
significant linguistic boundary, the River Daugava. The most obvious
Finno-Ugric substratum feature of Latvian is word-initial dynamic stress,
something totally alien to Lihuanian, which retains the typical
Indo-European type of mobile pitch accent.
? Estonia - significant linguistic influence in the form of Baltic
loanwords, but no language shift. Full cultural shift to an
agricultuyre-based lifestyle. The physical anthropological type that
dominated within the Finno-Ugric-speaking group predominates.
? Belarus - the Finno-Ugric people who once lived there, the Meryas,
Muroms. Meshchers (http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuva:Muromian-map.png),
were assimilated into the Balts and, later, the Slavs. Finno-Ugric and
Baltic survive in the area as placenames and loanwords. The lost
Finno-Ugric lanuages, Merya, Morom, and Meshcher were once part of a
linguistic continuum linking the Finno-Ugric speakers of the Baltic region
("Chudes") to the Mordvins.
To paraphrase the Finnish linguist Kalevi Wiik: From a Finnish standpoint,
the Baltic countries confront Finns with many mysteries. The Estonians
look like us and we can understand much of their speech. Latvians also
look like us and their speech initially sounds somewhat familiar, but we
can't understand it except for an occcasional word. Lithuanians don't look
like us, their speech sounds unfamiliar, nor can we understand it.
Latvian is the imperfectly learned colonial Lithuanian simplified and
modified by speakers of Finno-Ugric. Or to put it even more bluntly,
Latvian is bad Lithuanian spoken with a heavy Estonian accent.
Below is a recent cladistics lingusitic tree that is based upon an
enormous number of word language group comparisons. It appears to show
Latvian as being more conservative than Lithuanian.
Words are the *least* reliable indices of linguistic relationship and
history. All but the most basic words circulate from language to language
within a cultural sphere, and are typically the result of cultural
innovation and dissemination. Latvian words such as komponists 'composer',
firma 'firm', kase 'cashdesk', meistars 'master', and even seemingly
'pure' Latvian words such as neatkarîba 'independence' = ne- + at- + kar +
îba = un- + ab - häng - igkeit = in- + de- + penden + tia, etc. etc. The
most reliable index of language relationship is regular sound
correspondences in inherited vocabulary. Latvian z- regularly corresponds
to English k- in inherited words, e.g. zobs 'tooth' = English comb [koum];
zirnis 'pea' = English corn [korn]; zin- 'to know' = English
ken/acknowledge [-kn-], etc.
Secondly - as I have long argued with the usual bunch of *pie morons -
the Baltic group (Latvian and Lithuanian) - sits supreme as the
mainline language group of the entire 'indo-european' language tree in
this cladistic analysis.
The Baltic group, specifically Lithuanian, is arguably the most archaic
branch of Indo-European. Nevertheless, it has undegone some radical
changes, the most significant being the reduction of the three-gebder
system to two, and the use of the historical third person singular verb
forms for singular as well as plural. Latvian has diverged radically from
Indo-European in its phonology and morphology, while Lithuanian has not,
something evident to anyone from the following table:
ROOT THEMATIC VOWEL CASE MARKER
PIE *wlq o s *wlqos 'wolf'
Sanskrit vrk a h vrkah 'wolf'
Greek lyk o s lykos 'wolf'
Latin lup u s lupus 'wolf'
Lithuanian vilk a s vilkas 'wolf'
Gothic wulf - s wulfs 'wolf'
Old Norse ulf - r ulfr 'wolf'
Latvian vlks - a vlks 'wolf'
Old English wolf - - wolf 'wolf'
This is a significant observation about the difference between
conservative Lithuanian and more innovating Latvian nominal morphology,
and it means that the paradigms in the to languages are formed according
to radically different organizing principles, one a retention from
Indo-European, the other a break with it.
(It really should be called the 'Baltic-European' language tree.)
No it shouldn't. Language families are named after their geographic
limits. Indo-European (formerly called Indo-Germanic) because it
incompasses an area traditionally delimited by India and Europe (or the
Germanic languages, Iceland being the westernmost one before the Age of
Discovery). Baltic is actually right there in the center of things, being
the westernmost of the eastern (satem) Indo-European languages.
<deletions>
You still have a lot to learn about the historical study of language.
\EH
.
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