A History of East Baltic through Language Contact (original) (raw)

Phonological evidence for a Proto-Baltic stage in the evolution of East and West Baltic

The position of the so-called ‘Baltic’ languages Lithuanian, Latvian and Old Prussian within the Balto-Slavonic branch of Indo-European is still a matter of debate. Within Balto-Slavonic, the Slavonic sub-branch is clearly identifiable due to an exclusive set of phonological and morphological innovations not shared by ‘Baltic’. The ‘East Baltic’ languages Lithuanian and Latvian are similarly separated from both Slavonic and the ‘West Baltic’ language Old Prussian by a set of characteristic innovations. What remains to be clarified, is the exact position of Old Prussian. Traditionally, Old Prussian is either grouped with ‘East Baltic’, thus implying a common Proto-Baltic stage after the disintegration of Proto-Balto-Slavonic, or it is seen as a separate sub-branch of Balto-Slavonic. The situation is additionally complicated by several nontrivial features shared by ‘East Baltic’ and Slavonic but not found in Old Prussian. Such features point to a third possible position on the sub-branches of Balto-Slavonic, i.e. grouping East Baltic together with Slavonic which implies a particularly early separation of Old Prussian from the rest of the branch. The paper intends to foster the theoretical discussion by pointing out two nontrivial phonological developments which must be assumed for both ‘East’ and ‘West Baltic’ but not for Slavonic and therefore may constitute evidence for Proto-Baltic as a parent language of both ‘Baltic’ branches.

The prehistoric context of the oldest contacts between Baltic and Finnic languages

Dating and locating the ancient contacts between Baltic and Finnic is a crucial question when searching for the origins of the Finnic languages. Evidence gained from linguistic palaeontology seems to place Proto-Uralic in the Volga-Kama Basin, some 2000 kilometres east of the Baltic, in a region where the Uralic Mari and Udmurt languages are still spoken today (see Toivonen 1952 for a well-detailed study of the fi eld and Häkkinen 2009 for a somewhat revised view). However, there is no clear linguistic or archaeological evidence to tell us when Proto-Uralic broke down into its different daughter languages and when one of these, Proto-Finnic, had left this eastern area and spread to the shores of the Baltic Sea. In order to reconstruct the process and its different stages we require information that can be provided by the Baltic loanwords. As the Baltic loanwords are not attested in the more eastern Uralic branches, with the exception of a relatively few lexical items in Mordvinic (cf. van Pareren 2008 and Grünthal, this volume, for a recent detailed overview of the question), we must assume that the contacts took place when Finnic already was an independent branch within the Uralic language family or was at least in the process of breaking off. The contacts cannot be located far away from where the Baltic languages are or have been spoken. The area in which the Baltic languages were spoken was prehistorically much wider than it is today, since the major hydro-nyms of a vast area between Moscow and the mouth of the Vistula are of Baltic origin (Toporov – Trubačev 1962). The Volga-Kama Basin lies still too far east to be included in a list of possible contact locations. Instead, we could look for the contact area somewhere between Estonia in the west and the surroundings of Moscow in the east, a zone with evidence of Uralic settlement in the north and Baltic on the south side. Since present-day Finland lies quite far away from this zone, the discussion regarding the areal dimension of the contacts has concentrated on whether to include Finland in the contact area or not, and this question has chronological implications. There have been two main concurrent hypotheses concerning the assumed contacts in the territory of present-day Finland, fi rstly, the alleged migration of the Finnish settlement and, secondly, its continuity on the northern side of the Gulf of Finland. In addition, some other models have also been proposed. Here we shall discuss these theories and their strong and weak points.

Baltic and Finnic linguistic relations reflected in geolinguistic studies of the Baltic languages

Eesti ja soome-ugri keeleteaduse ajakiri. Journal of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics, 2014

The article provides insight into the reflection of Baltic and Finnic language contacts in geolinguistic studies of the Baltic languages. These contacts have a rather long history, and are particularly intense between the Latvian language and Finnic languages (especially Livonian and Estonian). In Lithuanian, Finnic borrowings have mostly appeared through Latvian, and fall into the dialectal Lithuanian vocabulary. The analysed material makes it possible to distinguish several areas of Finnic influences in Latvian sub-dialects. They are as follows: 1) the territory of the Livonian dialect which originated from Latvian-Livonian contact; 2) the sub-dialects along the Estonian border; 3) the sub-dialects around Gulbene and Alūksne; 4) the territory of the krieviņi (descendants of people who spoke Votic) in the Zemgale region; and 5) the sub-dialects in the Latgale region around Ludza. Geolinguistic research on language contacts may be helpful in solving certain problems of ethnic histor...

On the 'Early Baltic' Loanwords in Common Finnic

Alexander Lubotsky, Jos Schaeken & Jeroen Wiedenhof (eds.), Evidence and Counter-Evidence: Essays in Honour of Frederik Kortlandt 1. Balto-Slavic and Indo-European Linguistics, pp. 265-277. Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics 32. Amsterdam - New York, NY., 2008

A COLLECTION OF FORGOTTEN ETYMOLOGIES: REVISITING THE MOST IMPROBABLE BALTIC LOANWORDS IN FINNIC

The Finnic languages have an ancient loanword stock from Baltic, as proven already by Vilhelm Thomsen in 1869. Still, the period and location of the prehistoric contacts have not been satisfactorily established. A list of 202 old Baltic loanwords into Proto-Finnic has been presented by Seppo Suhonen in 1988. There are, however, 299 more Baltic etymologies suggested up to 1988 that Suhonen hasn't included in his list. This article aims to analyze whether some of these forgotten or abandoned etymologies might prove correct in the light of recent research in the field of historical lexicology. The analysis consists of three parts: distribution and alternative explanations; phonology; and semantics. 121 out of 282 analyzed etymologies failed the test. Most of the remaining 161 also seem problematic, but several of them will certainly be accepted after a thorough etymologic analysis in the future.

Case-Studies from the Earliest Baltic Linguistics (16th Century)

studied at the University of Pisa, specialising in Baltic Studies in Lithuania (where later he became Doctor h.c.), Latvia (where he is a member of the Academy of Sciences), Poland and Germany (W. Bessel-Forschungspreisträger). He has taught Linguistics in Potenza and Baltic Philology in Oslo; at present he teaches both subjects at the University of Pisa. His main interests lie in the fields of comparative historical linguistics and history of Baltic languages. His book Le lingue baltiche (1997) has been translated into Lithuanian, Latvian (2000), Russian (2002) and English. Dar 1954-aisiais metais Giuliano Bonfante užsiminė, kad labai mažai turėtų stebinti tas faktas, jog baltų kalbų nėra seniausiuose Europos kalbų aprašymuose. Taip jau atsitiko, kad ankstesnių laikų filologai baltų kalbų nemokėjo ir ilgai jas ignoravo. Praėjus penkiasdešimčiai metų po Bonfante's teiginio, vadinamosios "premokslinės" kalbotyros (ir ypač Renesanso epochos paleokomparatyvizmo) tyrimai gerokai pasistūmėjo į priekį, išsiplėtė, tačiau baltistika nepateko į jų akiratį. Ankstesnių laikų sampratos bei teorijos apie baltų kalbas iki šiol netapo sistemiško mokslinio susidomėjmo objektu. Kadangi subrendęs mokslas negali neskirti dėmesio savo praeičiai, tai baltistikoje dabar jau yra padėti teoriniai pagrindai lingvistiniams istoriografiniams tyrimams. Toliau vertėtų atkreipti dėmesį į kai kuriuos šios specifinės lingvistikos šakos bruožus. Tokio pobūdžio tyrimams svarbiausias yra istoriografinis, o ne istorinis momentas; be to, jų prigimčiai būdinga orientuotis į teoriją, o ne į faktus. Šio straipsnio tikslas -rekonstruoti lingvistines baltų kalbų sampratas, vyravusias Humanizmo ir Renesanso epochose, didžiausią dėmesį skiriant Renesanso paleokomparatyvizmo periodui. Tuo metu apie baltų kalbų kilmę ir jų genealoginį priklausymą buvo paplitusiosios kelios lingvistinės sampratos: slaviškoji, romėniškoji ir "pusiaulotyniškoji", "keturių kalbų", ilyriškoji, graikiškoji (tik apie prūsų kalbą) ir dar kitos. Įdomiausia yra tai, kad visos šios sampratos "gyvavo" tuo pačiu metu. Dažnai daugelis autorių laikėsi ne vienos sampratos ir jas sąmoningai ar nesąmoningai sujungdavo.

Looking across the Baltic Sea and over Linguistic Fences

In Maths Bertell, Frog & Kendra Willson (eds.). Contacts and Networks in the Baltic Sea Region: Austmarr as a Northern Mare nostrum, ca. 500–1500 AD. Turku Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press. Pp. 11–25., 2019

The introduction presents a history of the current state of scholarship on cultural contacts in the Baltic prior to the High Middle Ages. We discuss the challenges of bringing together the separate disciplinary and national traditions. Each academic subject has evolved largely as a separate practice across much of the twentieth century, with only gradual and often limited integration with the more recent movements toward interdisciplinarity. Furthermore, each discipline operates to a great extent within national traditions, maintained by language barriers and funding structures, making international dialogues crucially important. This introduction is intended as a steppingstone for gaining perspective on the diverse contributions to the volume Contacts and Networks in the Baltic Sea Region: Austmarr as a Northern Mare nostrum, ca. 500–1500 AD.

The shared lexicon of Baltic, Slavic and Germanic (MA Thesis)

Baltic, Slavic and Germanic share a few hundred lexical items with each other that in many cases may be traced back to a common substrate, probably a Corded Ware-related dialect spoken inbetween pre-PGmc. and pre-PBSl. which also contained a layer of neolithic vocabulary. Shared forms refer to both natural and cultural items, the latter often to types of labour and the use of wooden technology. Since the writing of this thesis, I have changed my opinion on (the validity of) a few forms and am I of the opinion that the Corded Ware culture played a larger role in the development of post-Tocharian Indo-European branches than I have assumed here.