Balto-Slavic languages

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Countries where the national language is:      Eastern Slavic      Western Slavic      Southern Slavic      Baltic

The Balto-Slavic language group consists of the Baltic and Slavic languages, belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. Having experienced a period of common development, Baltic and Slavic languages share several linguistic traits not found in any other Indo-European branch, which points to their close genetic relationship.

A hypothetical Proto-Balto-Slavic language is also reconstructable, descending from Proto-Indo-European by means of well-defined sound laws, and out of which modern Slavic and Baltic languages descended. One particularly innovative dialect separated from the Balto-Slavic dialect continuum and became ancestral to Proto-Slavic language, out of which all other Slavic languages descended.

There was extensive debate in the first half of the 20th century on the exact details of the relationship among Slavic and Baltic languages. Some claimed they were genetically related, and others explained similarities by prolonged language contact. Modern research, especially with insights gained in the field of comparative Balto-Slavic accentology, corroborates the claim of genetic relationship.[1]

Historical dispute

The nature of the relationship of the Balto-Slavic languages has been the subject of much discussion from the very beginning of historical Indo-European linguistics as a scientific discipline. Even though the similarities between Baltic and Slavic languages are often more than obvious, some were, and still are, more intent on explaining them not in terms of a genetic relationship, but by language contact and dialectal closeness in the Proto-Indo-European period.

Various schematic sketches of possible alternative Balto-Slavic language relationships; Van Wijk, 1923

Baltic and Slavic share more close phonological, lexical, morphosyntactic and accentological similarities than do any other language groups within the Indo-European language family. The notable early Indo-Europeanist August Schleicher (1861) proposed a simple solution: From Proto-Indo-European descended Proto-Balto-Slavic, out of which Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic emerged. The Latvian linguist Jānis Endzelīns thought, however, that any similarities among Baltic and Slavic languages were a result of an intensive language contact, i.e., that they were not genetically related and that there was no common Proto-Balto-Slavic language. Antoine Meillet (1905, 1908, 1922, 1925, 1934), the distinguished French Indo-Europeanist, in reaction to a second simplified theory of Schleicher's, propounded a view according to which all similarities of Baltic and Slavic occurred accidentally, by independent parallel development, and that there was no Proto-Balto-Slavic language. From a modern perspective, the most acceptable theory is that of the Polish linguist Rozwadowski, who thought that the similarities among Baltic and Slavic languages are a result of not only genetic relationship, but also of later language contact.

Even though some linguists still do not accept today the genetic relationship, prevalent scholarly opinion is that there is very little doubt that Baltic and Slavic languages experienced a period of common development. Beekes (1995: 22), for example, states expressly that "[t]he Baltic and Slavic languages were originally one language and so form one group". Gray and Atkinson's (2003) application of language-tree divergence analysis supports a genetic relationship between the Baltic and Slavic languages and dating the split of the family to about 1400 BCE. That this was found using a very different methodology than other studies lends some credence to the links between the two.[2].

Modern interpretation

Traditionally the Balto-Slavic languages are divided into Baltic and Slavic branches. However, another division was proposed in the 1960s by Vyacheslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov: that the Balto-Slavic proto-language split from the start into West Baltic, East Baltic and Proto-Slavic. Thus Ivanov and Toporov were the first to question not Balto-Slavic unity, but also Baltic unity. In their framework, Proto-Slavic is a peripheral and innovative Balto-Slavic dialect which suddenly expanded, due to a conjunction of historical circumstances, and effectively erased all the other Balto-Slavic dialects, except in the marginal areas where Lithuanian, Latvian and Old Prussian developed. Onomastic evidence shows that Baltic languages were once spoken in much wider territory than the one they cover today, all the way to Moscow, and were later replaced by Slavic.

The Ivanov-Toporov model is supported by the newest research into Old Prussian as the only well-documented representative of the West Baltic branch. It is also supported by archaeological evidence and other historical indications. The West and East Balts would have been separated from the Slavs by the Goths. Before the split there was some kind of dialect continuum, on whose outskirts existed an innovative dialect that was ancestral to Proto-Slavic.

Area of Balto-Slavic dialectic continuum (purple) with proposed material cultures correlating to speakers Balto-Slavic in Bronze Age (white). Red dots= archaic Slavic hydronyms

The sudden expansion of Proto-Slavic in the sixth and the seventh century (around AD 600, uniform Proto-Slavic with no detectable dialectal differentiation was spoken from Thessaloniki in Greece to Novgorod in Russia[3]) is according to some connected to the hypothesis that Proto-Slavic was in fact a koiné of the Avar state, i.e. the language of the administration and military rule of the Avar khaganate in Eastern Europe.[4] It is well-known from historical sources that Slavs and Avars jointly attacked the Byzantine Empire and laid siege to Constantinople[5]. According to that interpretation, Avars were a thin layer of military aristocracy in that state/alliance, while the Slavs were a military caste - warriors (i.e. not a nation or ethnicity in the proper sense of that word). Their language - at first possibly only one local speech - once koinéized, became a lingua franca of the Avar state. This might explain how Proto-Slavic spread to the Balkans and the areas of the Danubian basin,[6] and would also explain why the Avars were assimilated so fast, leaving practically no linguistic traces, and that Proto-Slavic was so unusually uniform. However, such a theory fails to explain how Slavic spread to the Baltic region and former Soviet countries, areas which had no historical links with the Avar Khanate[7].

That sudden expansion of Proto-Slavic erased most of the idioms of the Balto-Slavic dialect continuum, which left us today with only three branches: Eastern Baltic, Western Baltic and Slavic. This secession of the Balto-Slavic dialect ancestral to Proto-Slavic is estimated on archaeological and glottochronological criteria to have occurred sometime in the period 1500-1000 BCE.[8]

Balto-Slavic isoglosses

The close relationship of the Baltic and Slavic languages is indicated by a series of exclusive isoglosses representing innovations not shared with any other IE branch (especially in their phonology) and by the fact that one can establish the relative chronology of those innovations, which is the most important criterion for establishing genetic relationship in historical linguistics. The most important of these isoglosses are:

• Winter's law (lengthening of vowels before PIE voiced consonants, probably only in a closed syllable)
• identical reflexes of PIE syllabic sonorants
• Hirt's law (retraction of PIE accent to the preceding syllable closed by a laryngeal)
• rise of the Balto-Slavic acute before PIE laryngeals in a closed syllable
• replacement of PIE genitive singular of thematic nouns with ablative
• ending for instrumental plural of *-miHs; e.g. Lith. sūnumìs, OCS synъmi 'with sons'
• formation of past tense with the ending *-ē (a type of Lithuanian preterite dãvė 'he gave', OCS imperfect bě 'he was')
• generalization of the PIE neuter *to- stem to the nominative singular of masculine and feminine demonstratives instead of PIE *so-, i.e. PIE demonstrative *só, *séh₂, *tód (‘this, that’) became PBSl. *tos, *ta, *tod
• formation of so-called definite adjectives with a construction that includes adjective and a relative pronoun, e.g. Lith. geràsis 'the good' as opposed to gẽras 'good', OCS dobrъjь 'the good' as opposed to dobrъ 'good'
• usage of genitive to state the object of a negated verb, e.g. Russ. knigi (ja) ne čital, Lith. knygos neskaičiau 'I haven't' read the book'.

Common Balto-Slavic innovations include several other prominent, but non-exclusive isoglosses, such as the Satemization, Ruki, change of PIE */o/ to PBSl. */a/ (shared with Germanic, Indo-Iranian and Anatolian branch) and the loss of labialization in PIE labiovelars (shared with Indo-Iranian, Armenian and Tocharian). A number of these, however, fit only in the relative chronology of other otherwise exclusive Balto-Slavic isoglosses, which makes them specific Balto-Slavic innovation.

Baltic and Slavic languages also show a remarkable amount of correspondence in vocabulary; there are at least 100 words exclusive to Balto-Slavic, either being a common innovation (i.e. not of PIE origin) or sharing the same semantic development from PIE root[9]. For example:

• PBSl. *lḗjpā 'tilia' > Lith. líepa, Old Pr. līpa, Latv. liẽpa; PSl. *léjpā > Common Slavic *lipa (OCS lipa, Russ. lipa, Pol. lipa)
• PBSl. *ránkā 'hand' > Lith. rankà, Old Pr. rānkan (A sg.), Latv. rùoka; PSl. *ránkā > Common Slavic *rǭkà (OCS rǫka, Russ. ruká, Pol. ręka)
• PBSl. *galwā́ 'head' > Lith. galvà, Old Pr. galwo, Latv. galva; PSl. *galwā́ > Common Slavic *golvà (OCS glava, Russ. golová, Pol. głowa)

Among Balto-Slavic archaisms notable is the retention of free PIE accent (with many innovations).

On the other hand, there are very few exclusive isoglosses that connect Baltic languages only, and that leave Slavic languages aside. Many of these isoglosses are trivial from a phonological point of view (e.g. transition PIE *tl > Baltic *kl), and most importantly, they do not show any kind of relative chronology.