Phonological evidence for a Proto-Baltic stage in the evolution of East and West Baltic (original) (raw)
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.
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There is little or no evidence for a period of common West and East Baltic innovations after the period of common Balto-Slavic developments before the separation of Slavic from the Baltic languages. The terms “Proto-Baltic” and “Proto-Balto-Slavic” refer to the same thing, and Slavic may alternatively be called “South Baltic”. The opposite view is taken by Miguel Villanueva Svensson (2014) and Eugen Hill (2016). Here I specify the differences which underlie the disagreement.
Indo-European Linguistics and Classical Philology 25(1), 2021
The purpose of the paper is to find an historical explanation for the inessive case-forms of determinate, or ‘long’ adjectives of Standrad Lithuanian. It argues that Standard Lithuanian iness.sg. fem. gerõjoje, gerãjame etc. do not descend from their ‘fuller’ Old Lithuanian counterparts but rather reflect an independent formation. This independent formation is best understood as directly reflecting the inherited, Proto-Balto-Slavonic and/or Proto-Indo-European locative case, secondarily enlarged by the inessive clitic Proto-East-Baltic *=ḗn. The discussion of the phonological developments presupposed by this reconstruction yields interesting results concerning the phonetic realisation of the acute intonation in Proto-Baltic times.
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