Slavic and The Indo-European Migrations

Slavic and the Indo-European Migrations. Language Contacts in Prehistory.
Studies in Stratigraphy (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 239) ed. by Henning Andersen, 4576. AmsterdamPhiladelphia: John Benjamins, 2003.
SLAVIC AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN MIGRATIONS Henning Andersen University of California, Los Angeles Introduction It has long been acknowledged that the Slavic languages contain scores of shared loanwords that reflect episodes or periods of language contact in their relatively recent prehistory.1 It has also been recognized that much of the inherited Common Slavic vocabulary is heterogeneous and shows affinities with several other IndoEuropean language groupsespecially Baltic, Iranian, Italic, and Germanic which is traditionally taken as evidence of developments shared with the forerunner dialects of these language groups, or of contacts with them, in a more distant past. But besides this lexical material, there is phonological evidence that suggests a heterogeneous origin of Slavicirregular correspondences that point to prehistoric contacts between ancestral dialects of Slavic and other, more or less closely related Indo-European dialects which we cannot identify by name. It is the main purpose of this paper to review some of this phonological evidence and argue for its importance in developing an understanding of the origin of Slavic and the neighboring Baltic languages. In the pages that follow, Section 1 offers a brief overview of approaches to stratigraphy in comparative Slavic linguistics. This will serve as background for an examination, in Section 2, of the just mentioned phonological material. Section 3 discusses the problem of corroborating hypothetical interpretations of such data and draws on the testimony of additional perspectives that seems consistent with the phonological evidence. Section 4 briefly mentions implications for our understanding of the spread of the Indo-European dialects from the supposed homeland. 0.
1
I am grateful to Theo Vennemann for generous advice I gladly took, and to Yves-Charles Morin, who came to my aid with some much needed references when my files (and my memory) failed me.
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The tradition of stratigraphy in comparative Slavic linguistics Overview The rod and staff of stratigraphic studies in Slavic, as in other language groups, quite naturally, is the seriation of phonological changes. In Slavic prehistory, these cluster in two periods, one early, the other recent.2 The early period, of uncertain length and relatively ancient (30001000 B.C.?), includes the phonological changes which set the pre-Slavic and pre-Baltic dialects apart from other Indo-European dialect groups as well as the changes that differentiate the two groups from one another. On the whole, these changes have not played the role they should in discussions of Slavic prehistory. They are the topic of Section 2. The recent period, which extends roughly from the 300s to the 900s A.D., comprises changes that are common to all Slavic dialects as well as the regional changes that gave rise to the earliest, major isoglosses that criss-cross the territory of the modern Slavic languages. In terms of external history, this period begins with the migration of the Goths from the Baltic coast to the Black Sea littoral a century or so before the Slavic territorial expansion. Its end coincides approximately with the Christianization of the Slavs and the formation of the first Slavic states. The seriation of the phonological changes of this period helps to identify several layers of lexical ingredients from Iranian, Celtic, Altaic, and Germanic languages; see Section 1.1. Between these two periods characterized by phonological change is a period of indeterminate length during which numerous lexical affinities between Slavic and other Indo-European dialects are thought to have developed; see Section 1.2. Since this paper is concerned with prehistory, I entirely omit discussion of the historical period after about A.D. 900, in which an increasingly ample textual attestation of the Slavic languagestogether with the data of historical dialectology and reliable information about the relevant contact languages
2
Notational conventions. I omit asterisks in reconstructed forms labeled PS, PB, and LCS. Late Common Slavic forms that happen to be attested in Old Church Slavonic are labeled OCS. The following abbreviations are used: Alb. (Albanian), Arm. (Armenian), Av. (Avestan), Bg. (Bulgarian), Br. (Belorussian), Celt. (Celtic), ChS (Church Slavonic), Cz. (Czech), d. (dialect), Eng. (English), Fi. (Finnish), Fr. (French), Gk. (Greek), Gm. (German), Go. (Gothic), Hitt. (Hittite), Ir. (Irish), Iran (Iranian), Ka. (Kashubian), La. (Latvian), Lat. (Latin), LCS (Late Common Slavic), Li. (Lithuanian), LS (Lower Sorbian), M (Middle), Mac. (Ancient Macedonian), o. (old, obsolete), O (Old), OCS (Old Church Slavonic), OE (Old English), OHG (Old High German), ON (Old Norse), OPr. (Old Prussian), Osc. (Oscan), P (Polish), Panj. (Panjabi), Pb. (Polabian), PB (Proto-Baltic), PGmc. (Proto-Germanic), PS (Proto-Slavic), R (Russian), SC (SerbianBosnianCroatian), Sk. (Slovak), Skt. (Sanskrit), Sn. (Slovenian), st. (standard), U (Ukrainian), US (Upper Sorbian), W (Welsh).
SLAVIC AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN MIGRATIONS
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enable investigators to construct rather detailed chronological accounts of individual Slavic language traditions. Not surprisingly, these reflect the cultural relations among the Slavic peoples and between them and their neighbors in northern, western, and central Europe, in the Balkans, in eastern Europe, and in Asia during the last thousand years. Common Slavic lexical accessions in recent prehistory The recent strata of lexical ingredients (cf. footnote 3) come from fairly well-defined language traditions. They bear witness to contacts with varieties of Germanic, Altaic, Celtic, and Iranian. They are traditionally simply called loanwords or borrowings, but while some may indeed be borrowings in the strict sense, many may have entered Slavic as intrusions.3 It is generally recognized that during the period in question, there were dialect differences within Common Slavic, and some ingredients are in fact geographically limited. 1.1 1.1.1 Germanic. There are several strata of Germanic ingredients (cf. Kiparsky 1934, 1975:5559; Goab ! 1991:362384, Schenker 1995:159160). The secure examples comprise about fifty items distributed among four categories, preGothic, Gothic, Balkan-Germanic, and West Germanic, in the proportions 2 : 3 : 1 : 4. They include some items ultimately from Latin or Greek. The West Germanic ingredients, in the main clearly High German, date from after the beginning of the Slavic westward expansion (from the 400s on) and in part reflect the eastward expansion of the Roman Catholic church, in part the later Frankish expansion in the same direction. An earlier layer comprises lexemes that are attested in Gothic and can be assigned to the time of the Gothic dominion north of the Black Sea (200s300s A.D.). A small number of ingredients that have no correspondents in the Gothic corpus, and whose meanings point to the Balkans as the place of accession, are thought to have been adopted from either Gothic or the dialects of some other Germanic-speaking groups (Gepids, Herules?) after the 500s, when Slavic contacts with the Balkans intensified. The ingredients of the oldest layer appear to antedate the shared Common Slavic sound changes. They cannot be attributed to specific Germanic dialects, but may correlate with the archaeological evidence of the presumably Germanic Przeworsk culture, which diffused into Slavic territory in the Upper Dniester region in the first centuries of our era (Sedov 1993:45).
For the terms borrowing, intrusion, interference, and transfer, see pp. 69 above.
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1.1.2 Altaic. The Altaic ingredients, mainly culturally motivated borrowings, are attributed to contacts between Slavs and some of the series of Altaic-speaking groups that entered the western steppe region after the eclipse of Iranian populations there. The Huns routed the Goths in 375. The Avars dominated some Slavic groups in the 500s700s and were allies of the Slavs during their colonization of the Balkans. The Bulgars, first known for their dominion on the lower Volga, established themselves in the Balkan Peninsula in 679, where their ethnonym was adopted by the Slavs they ruled, and among whom their thin superstratum was dissolved. These are relevant to the period of interest here and the stratum of a dozen or so Altaic ingredients in Common Slavic. Linguistic evidence of contact with the Khazars (who held sway in the 700s900s from the Middle Volga south to the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus, and the Black Sea), the Patzinaks (R pec e negi ), the Coumans (R polovcy Polovetzians), Tatars, and Mongols belongs to a more recent period. 1.1.3 Celtic. Celtic ingredients in Common Slavic are rather few. They appear to be intrusions. It seems likely that they date from the period from the 300s B.C. to the 100s A.D. In the early part of this period the Celtic expansion across Central Europe reached what is now the west Ukrainian province of Galicia (U Halycyna, with the ancient capital Halyc, PS gal!k-ja- the Celts (viz. city); poss.adj.), but contacts may have occurred elsewhere as well, and perhaps some accessions were mediated by other languages. 1.1.4 Iranian. The Iranian ingredients have traditionally been thought to reflect contacts between Slavs and Scythians and Sarmatians in what is now southern Russia from the 700s B .C . to the 300s A .D . And they have traditionally been accepted as evidence of cultural influence, some being clearly related to religious beliefs or practices. The close mapping between Early Common Slavic and Iranian phonology in this period (Zaliznjak 1963) makes it hard to determine whether some similar lexemes are cognates or Iranian accessions. It is interesting that despite their apparently early date of accession, quite a few Iranian ingredients are limited to specific Slavic areas (Trubacev 1967). Lexical affinities in the more distant past All through the 1900s, Slavists and Indo-Europeanists, inspired by Meillets (1908) Dialectes indo-europeens (cf. Porzig 1954), endeavored to go beyond the rough understanding captured in Schleichers conception of LithuSlavisch branching into Lithu-Lettisch and Slavisch. As a result, a great deal of progress has been made in establishing lexical isoglosses between Slavic and other Indo-European languages. 1.2
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The question of the relationship between Slavic and Baltic has been prominent in these endeavors, and several quite diverse interpretations of that relationship have been proposed (summarized in Trubacev 1983:238239; see also Dini 1997:128135). These will not be discussed here, but it must be mentioned that they fall into three categories: (i) some interpretations regard Slavic and Baltic as separate branches of Proto-Indo-European; (ii) some consider Slavic and Baltic sister descendants of a Proto-Balto-Slavic branch; (iii) still others view Slavic and the individual Baltic languages as sister descendants of a Proto-Baltic branch. Within each of these categories, scholars have hypothesized a variety of secondary (adstratum) contacts between Slavic and Baltic and/or between either or both of them and other Indo-European dialects in order to account both for their apparently shared innovations and their deep differences. I touch on this issue in Section 4. It should also be mentioned that irrespective of differences in the interpretation of the more distant (original) relationship among these languages, there is an emerging consensus that in recent times, say, at the beginning of our era, Slavic and Baltic dialects formed a continuum, located (west to east) from the Vistula to the Don and Oka basins and (north to south) from the Baltic Sea and the Upper Volga to the parklands in what is now northern Ukraine and southern Russia. In this conception, the attested Slavic and Baltic languages represent peripheral fragments of this large language area, the dialects transitional between them having become overlain by Slavic during the Slavic expansion (cf. Ivanov 1981, Toporov 1988, Andersen 1996, Birnbaum 1998). A major difficulty in determining the earlier relationships between Slavic and Baltic arises from the fact that during the long prehistorical periodfrom the earliest phonological individuation of Slavic and Baltic to the beginning of the Slavic expansion ca. A.D. 300there are no phonological changes in Slavic or Baltic that are amenable to secure seriation, and which might thus provide support for a relative dating of the lexical material. Investigations in this area have consequently had to use different means. 1.2.1 Craft terminology. Trubacev (1966) exploited the facts that the development of metalurgy, specifically smelting, presupposed a technology of pottery firing, and that pottery-making developed out of basket-weaving, and patterns of pottery decoration reflect various textile-making techniques. Against the background of the relative chronology of the basic craftswoodworking, weaving, pottery making, and metalurgyTrubacev subjected the corresponding Slavic systems of terminology to etymological analysis. He showed how the craft terminologies indeed reflect the technological development: terms coined for a later craft can commonly be explicated by their sense in an earlier craft. At the
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same time his analyses showed that many terminological innovations were shared between Slavic and other European language groups, but unevenly: Slavic shared more such innovations with Germanic (30 lexemes) than with Italic (26 lexemes), and many more with these than with Baltic (6 lexemes). He interpreted these differences (1966:392) as evidence of a cultural gradient across Europe, in which Baltic was peripheral, whereas Slavic was closer to the centers of technological innovation. A lot of progress has been made in Slavic etymologynot to mention Indo-European morphology or the history of the craftssince this study of forty years ago, and one would have to revisit all of Trubacevs assumptions and essentially redo the investigation to determine whether his conclusions are still valid. This would in fact be a worthwhile project. In any case, the study is a landmark in systematic etymology, and Trubacevs idea of exploiting the language-external relative chronology of the basic crafts for seriation is worthy of note. It could perhaps be applied with good results elsewhere. 1.2.2 Synonymous pairs. In a provocative paper on structural comparison, Ivanov & Toporov (1961) argued that the component structures of Proto-Slavic (vowel system, noun declension, etc.) can be derived from those of Proto-Baltic, but not vice versa. They interpreted this as evidence that the Slavic languages are descended from Proto-Baltic. This is the basic assumption of Martynov (1983, 1985 with additional references), who has devoted a series of studies to the investigation of pairs of nearly synonymous lexemes in Common Slavic, pairs in which one lexeme has a Baltic etymon while the other has correspondents in Italic, Iranian, Germanic, or Celtic. Martynov assumes that synonymous pairs of lexemes are unlikely to arise through borrowing and concludes that in such word pairs, the non-Baltic lexemes are intrusions (his term is R proniknovenie penetration), evidence of a series of contacts with superstratum dialects which, as their elements were integrated into the pre-Slavic tradition of speaking, gradually transformed an originally Baltic dialect into what we know as Slavic. He sketches the following progression: Proto-Baltic > East Baltic vs. West Baltic; West Baltic1 > Old Prussian; West Baltic2 (+ Italic intrusions, 1100s800s B.C.) > Proto-Slavic (+ Iranian intrusions, 500s400s B.C.) > Early Common Slavic (+ Germanic and Celtic intrusions and borrowings, 400s200s B.C.) > Late Common Slavic.4 Many of Martynovs etymological analyses are chronologically problematic, and some of his assumptions very questionable. His initial assumption that
4
Martynov distinguishes different chronological stages labeled (in Russian) protobaltijskij, protoslavjanskij and praslavjanskij, here rendered as Proto-Baltic, Proto-Slavic, and Early Common Slavic.
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synonymous pairs arise through intrusions more often than, or to the exclusion of, borrowings is hardly valid. And the very notion of synonymous lexemes is problematic both in theory and in its application in this work. For these reasons and others Martynovs conception of the emergence of Slavic has not found may adherents. Still, many of his observations are challenging, and the method of exploiting near-synonyms to establish a seriation probably valuable when applied to the right data (cf. Unger, this volume).1.2.3 Geographical affinities. Since the beginning of the 1900s, a great deal of work has been done on the elucidation of the geographical distribution of the lexical stock of the IndoEuropean languages. The interpretation of such distributional data involves a number of common-sense assumptions. For instance, it is assumed that shared innovations indicate contiguity of the given languages at the time of innovation, that a more widely shared innovation is likely to be older than a less widely shared one, that an innovation shared with geographically noncontiguous languages antedates their separation, and so on. And of course assumptions have to be made regarding the actual or, at least, relative location of language areas in prehistory. In his survey in Melnycuk (1966:500530) Krytenko defines these geographically defined layers of vocabulary: (i) a general Indo-European layer, (503520), (ii) a Western-European or European layer (520522), (iii) an East European layer (52223), (iv) a South European layer (523524), (v) a BaltoSlavic layer (524526), and (vi) a Slavic layer (526530). Goa!b (1991), the most recent attempt to form a synthetic account of the prehistoric linguistic relations between Slavic and other language communities, develops a more detailed account, represented in Figure 1. Here the seriation of the top five strata correlates with the phonological changes of the most recent period (cf. Section 1.1). A single phonological change of the early period, the Satm Assibilation, is reflected in the deepest stratum. The long intermediate period has been seriated largely on the basis of such assumptions as the ones mentioned just above. See, for example, the succession of strata in Figure 1 labeled Younger centum elements, (Balto-)Slavic Germanic Baltic Celtic layer, Balto-Slavic Germanic layer, Slavic Germanic, Proto-Slavic innovations. But note also the realistic view that innovations in the inherited BaltoSlavic ingredients occurred concurrently with the accession of new ingredients in a series of substantial contact episodes, over a period of perhaps 1500 years. Goa!bs synthesis integrates findings by scholars making quite diverse initial assumptions and using different methods of analysis, including Trubacev (1966) and Martynov (1983), mentioned above.
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Time 600s 400s700s 400s500s 100S300s Before A.D. 200 500 B.C. 700 B.C.
HENNING ANDERSEN No. of lexemes 8 18 7 18 17
1000 B.C. 2000 B.C.
3000 B.C.
Old High German Altaic: Hunnic, Avar, Bulgar Balkan Germanic Gothic Early Germanic Proto-Slavic innovations Slavic-Germanic (on Venetic substratum?) Balto-Slavic innovations Slavic-Germanic (on Venetic substratum?) Balto-Slavic Germanic layer (Balto-)Slavic Germanic Baltic Celtic layer (Northwest IE) Slavic (Indo-)Iranian layer Balto-Slavic Indo(-Iranian) layer Younger centum elements Older centum elements Old satm elements
600 66 (+ 6) 73 (+ 5) 71 49 26 14 45
Figure 1: Lexical strata in Common Slavic. Based on Goa!b (1991:173 and passim)
The account Goa!b constructs is one of an original Indo-European satm dialect exposed to lexical enrichment and lexical replacements in contact with different (constellations of) adstrata through the centuries and, as a consequence, becoming differentiated from its sister dialects, while remaining its distinct from the various contact languages and developing its own individuality. In Goa!bs work, as in other investigations of its kind, acceptance of the conclusions depends to a large extent on the quality of the etymologies. It is regrettable that Goa!bs extensive synthesis, which was completed in 1982 (1991:iv), but actually developed in the 1970s, is based on impressionistic comparisons and written without the benefit of the advances made in IndoEuropean linguistics during the many years it was in gestation. In the following pages I will present some of the phonological evidence for a stratification of the forerunner dialects of Slavic. It will be seen that this evidence, which includes some material that is well known from the handbooks, yields hypotheses that are very different from one part of Goab ! s account.
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Irregular phonological correspondences in Proto-Slavic Proto-Indo-European palatals Slavic and Baltic are satm languages, that is, like Indo-Iranian, Armenian, and Albanian, they have sibilant reflexes of Proto-Indo-European palatal plosives andat least in their reconstructed earliest stagesvelars for ProtoIndo-European velars and labiovelars. Some typical examples are offered in Table 1. But besides numerous regular examples such as these, there are irregular reflexes of at least two kinds. 2. 2.1
PS s!rd-, LCS s!"rd!"ce, OCS sr!"d!"ce heart. PB sir-d- OPr. seyr, La. sir#ds, Li. sird`s. PIE *ker-d-. Cf. Arm. sirt, Gk. karda, Lat. corcordis, OIr. cride, Go. hairto, Eng. heart. PS desimt- , OCS dese$t!" ten. PB des i mt- , OPr. dessimpts , La. desmit , Li. de % s i mt . PIE *dekmt-. Cf. Skt. dasa, Av. dasa, Gk. deka, Lat. decem, OIr. deich, Go. taihun. PS zna-, OCS znati know. PB zina-, OPr. sinnat, La. zina#t, Li. zinoti. PIE *gn-eh2-. Cf. i recognizes, Arm. caneay recognized, Gk. gnosko, Lat. gnosco, Go. kann Skt. janat can, OE knawan know. PS zamba- , OCS zo $ b u " tooth. PB z a mba- , La. zo` b s tooth, Li. zam%bas edge. PIE *gombo-. Cf. Skt. jambha- tooth, Gk. gomphos peg, OHG kamb comb. PS zeima-, OCS zima winter. PB zeima-, OPr. semo, La. ziema, Li. ziema. PIE *geim-. Cf. Skt. hima-, Av. zima-, Arm. jmer&n, Gk. khe!%ma, Lat. hiems. PS wez-, OCS vestivezo$ transport. PB wez-, OPr. wessis sled, La. ve$zums cart-load, Li. vezu` transport. PIE *weg-. Cf. Skt. vahati, Gk. okhos carriage, Lat. veho, Go. wagjan to move, Eng. weigh. Table 1: Regular Slavic reflexes of Indo-European palatals
2.1.1 PB st for PIE *k. In Baltic, a few lexemes have st for PIE *k (Table 2). Trubacev (1973) considers these borrowings from pre-Slavic, and the st reflex, a phonetic substitution for pre-Slavic [ts], the intermediate stage in the pre-Slavic development *k ts s; cf. also Gamkrelidze & Ivanov (1984:108).
Li. st`rna deer, La. stir%na. But PB sirna-, La. o. sirna . PS sirna-, LCS s!"rna. PIE *kerhorn. Cf. Lat. cervus deer. Li. tukstantis thousand, La. tukstotis (with parasitic k), La. o. tuustosche. But PB tusimt-, OPr. tusimtons, PB tusamt- reflected in Fi. tuhansi, tuhat . PS tusimt(j)-!, tusamt(j)-!, OCS tyse$sti, tyso$sti. PIE d. *tu - s great + *k m t- hundred. Cf. Go. 'us-hundi, Franconian (Lex Salica) thuis chunde. OPr. parstian (Prastian) pig. But PB pars-a-, Li. par%sas. PS pars-ent-, OCS prase$, R porosenok. PIE *pork-o-. Cf. Lat. porcus pig, OHG far(a)h, OE fearh piglet, Eng. farrow. Table 2: Baltic examples of st for PIE *k
However, the scattered distribution of these forms does not point to a contact zone with Slavic. From a semantic point of view, only thousand would be a likely borrowing; the others are more likely intrusions. And there is no need to invoke phonetic substitution, for st is known to be a possible regular outcome
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of velar palatalization, as in Savoyan d. [ster] dear, [sta"] field, [sto] hot, etc. for LLat. CARU, CAMPU, CALDU, cf. Fr. st. cher, champ, chaud (Duraffour 1969, Martin & Tuaillon 19711978, s.vv.). Hence, the st forms are more likely intrusions contributed by bearers of otherwise unidentifiable satm dialects, merged with the pre-Baltic tradition of speaking. 2.1.2 Discrepant dorsals. In addition, both Slavic and Baltic languages have several dozen lexemes with velars as reflexes of Proto-Indo-European palatals. Investigators differ on the number of Proto-Indo-European roots showing such discrepant dorsals (traditionally termed Gutturalwechsel). Shevelov (1965:
PS berga-, LCS bergu" bank, R bereg. PIE *berg-o- hill. Cf. Skt. brh-ant- high, Av. brzant high, Alb. burg mountain, ridge, OHG berg mountain. PS kerd-a-, kurd-a-, LCS cerda, ku"rdu" herd, R cereda file, SC krdo herd, group. PB kerd-, OPr. kerdan time, Li. kerdzius shepherd. PIE *kerd-. Cf. Skt. sardha-, Av. sarda sort, Go. hairda herd. PB peku-, OPr. pecku cattle, Li. o. pe%kus. PIE *peku-. Cf. Skt. pasu-, Lat. pecu, Go. faihu. PB smakra-, La. smakrs, Li. sma%kras chin. PIE *smek-r-. Cf. Skt. smasru- beard. PS swekra-, LCS svekru" father-in-law. But PB sesura-, Li. se%suras. PIE *sweku-ro-. Cf. Skt. svasu-ra-, Lat. socer, Go. swaihro. PS gwaizd-a- star, LCS d. gvezda, P gwiazda, R zvezda. But PB zwaizd-e-, OPr. swaigstan light, La. zva`igzne star, Li. zvaigzde%. & PIE *gwoi-. Cf. Gk. pho!%bos bright. PS ka-mon-, OCS kamy rock (PIE d. *keh2-). PB ak-mon-, Li. akmuo% stone, but PB asmen-, Li. asmeny%s cutting edge. PIE *h2ek-mon-. Cf. Skt. asman- stone, Gk. akmon anvil, ON hamarr rock, cliff, OHG hamar hammer. PS sleu-, slaw-a-, OCS slutislovo$ call, name, slava fame. PB klau-s-! -, OPr. klausiton to hear, Li. klausyti to ask, but PB sluw-e-, slaw-e-, La. sluve#t be known, Li. slove%& fame. PIE *kleu-. Cf. Skt. srava- praise, Gk. kle(w)os praise. PS klan-!-, bend, bow OCS kloniti, R klonit, but PS slan-!-, LCS sloniti, R slonit lean. PIE *klei-. Cf. Skt. srayate, Gk. kl!no, Lat. cl!no, Lit. sl`eti lean. PS gansi- , LCS go$s!" goose, but PS zansi-, U d. dzus come, geese!. PB zansi-, OPr. sansy , La. zo`ss, Li. za$s`s goose. PIE *gan-. Cf. Skt. ham&sa-, Gk. khen, Lat. anser, OHG gans. PS kerm-aux-a-, R ceremuxa bird cherry, PS kerm-ux-ja- R ceremsa ramsons, but PS sermux-ja - , Sn. sre m s a bird cherry. PB kerm-(a)us - , La. ce$`rmauksis rowan, Li. kermuse%& wild garlic, but PB s e rmus - , Li. sermu`ksnis rowan. PIE *ker-. Cf. Gk. kromuon onion, Gmc. *hrams-, G. Ramsel ramsons, fireweed. PS garda- , LCS gordu" (fortified) city, R gorod , but PS ab-zarda- , R ozorod rack. PB garda-, Li. gar%das pen, but PB zarda-, Li. zar%das rack; fence, OPr. sardis fence. PIE *g erd- . Cf. Skt. grha- (< *grda-) dwelling, Alb. gardh fortified place, Go. gards house, OE geard yard. PS karw-a-, cow, LCS korva , R korova , but PS s!rn-a- deer. PB karw-e- cow, OPr. curwis , Li. karve&, but PB s!rn-a- st!rna-, OPr. sirwis , La. o. sirna , Li. st` r na . PIE *ker-wo- horned. Cf. Alb. kaqe bull; sg.pl., Gk. keraos, Lat. cervus deer. PS gil-ta-, LCS z!"ltu", R zeltyj yellow, but PS zel-e-na-, zal-ta-, OCS zelenu" green, LCS zolto, R zoloto gold. PB gelta-, OPr. gelatynan, La. dzelts, Li. geltonas yellow, but PB zel-ta-, Li. zelti grow green. PIE *gel-. Cf. Gk. kholos, e gall, OHG galla. Table 3: Discrepant dorsals in Slavic and Baltic
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142143) mentions some thirty; Steensland (1973) examines around seventy; Goa!b (1991:7991) identifies about sixty. Some of the roots are attested only with velar reflexes in Slavic or Baltic, while others occur with different variants in Slavic and Baltic, or with both velar and sibilant reflexes in one or more languages or language groups. Table 3 displays a sample. Since these discrepant dorsals were first identified in the 1800s, scholars have attempted to explain them, in the main, in three different ways, through sound change, borrowing, and language shiftthough also expressive or affective deformation has been considered (see Shevelov 1965:143). Sound change. Several explanations have been proposed which leave varying numbers of examples unaccounted for; see Stang (1966:9192). A rather intricate one is that of Kortlandt (1978); it is accepted in spirit by Gamkrelidze & Ivanov (1984:109114) and by Beekes (1995:109112). Kortlandt posits a number of conditioned sound changes of palatals to velars and labiovelars to velars, which result in neutralizations in a variety of environments. This sets the stage for analogical levelings, which produce different results from lexeme to lexeme and from one dialect to another, as well as instances of semantic differentiation, reflected in such doublets as OCS kloniti to bow, bend, LCS sloniti to lean (PS klan-!-, slan-!-), Li. akmuo% stone, asmuo% knife edge (PB ak-mon-, as-mon-). Kortlandts sound changes are more or less plausible. The motivation for the supposed analogical changes is left to the readers imagination and seems problematic in many cases. Still, this attempt at an explanation would be hard to reject were it not for two circumstances. First, it is clear that in the analogical levelings, Slavic and Baltic predominantly favored velars whereas Indo-Iranian favored palatals. Kortlandts account does not explain why this would be so. His explanation, then, in essence trades a phonological problem for an analogical mystery (or for as many mysteries as there are lexemes), and it does this at the cost of several otherwise uncalled-for hypothetical sound changes. Secondly, what needs to be accounted for is not just the irregular correspondences, but also very significant differences in their geographical distribution. In a sample of 75 lexemes with discrepant dorsals in one or more of the Slavic and Baltic language areas, velars are attested with the numbers 22 (Latvian) : 14 (Lithuanian) : 17 (Slavic), sibilants with the numbers 24 : 10 : 19, and lexical doublets or variants with velar sibilant, with the numbers 10 : 48 : 7. The much greater concentration of lexemes with dual reflexes in Lithuanian than in Latvian or Slavic has to be recognized as an explanandum. Borrowing . Some scholars have preferred considering the discrepant dorsals the result of borrowing from neighboring centum dialects, Germanic, Venetic-Illyrian, or West-Indo-European. Trubacev (1979, s.vv.) generally
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rejects such explanations, but accepts culturally motivated borrowing for some lexemes. An example is PS karw-a-, PB karw-e- cow (see Table 3). This he ([1979] vol. 11, 1984:106112) considers a borrowing from Celtic (caravos deer, read as *karwos), supposedly introduced as an explicit metaphor for cow together with the practice of drinking cows milk. Butleaving aside the milk hypothesisthe denotata of these lexemes must have been well-established among Slavs and Balts from time immemorial, given their familiarity with stockbreeding since the time of their pastoralist forefathers. This is true, too, mutatis mutandis, of the word for goose, which Trubacev thinks is a cultural borrowing. Wild geese have a wide occurrence in Eurasia and are extremely easily domesticated, leaving little reason to suppose the word for goose, LCS go$s!" goose PS gan-s-i- was borrowed. In this instance, the existence of U dzus word used to call geese shows that (some) (pre-)Slavic dialects had an inherited satm word (LCS d. zo$s!") for (domesticated) goose just like the (pre-)Balts; cf. Table 3. Most of the supposed borrowings with discrepant dorsals call for similar comments. Intrusion. Some scholars have felt that the best way to explain the irregular velar reflexes is to attribute them to more intimate interaction with a centum substratum or superstratum some time in the distant past. Investigators early pointed to Germanic as their likely source (see Kiparsky 1934:106), but only a few of the apparent centum words have Germanic correspondents (e.g., LCS bergu" bank, gordu" (hill) fort, go$s!" goose). Other scholars have explicitly spoken of other, unknown centum dialects. Kiparsky sees no reason to think the discrepant dorsals are not old, in which case they may have arisen in a lengthy period of contact between satm dialects and undifferentiated centum dialects (1934:108). Moszynski (1957:1822) and Goa!b (1991) are less explicit, but agree that the lexemes with discrepant dorsals are likely intrusions from an unknown centum substratum. There are actually several indications for this, both for Slavic and for Baltic. Consider the following, (i)(iii). (i) The character of the centum vocabulary that persisted through the substratum speakers language shifteveryday words having to do with stockbreeding (cow, herd, hoof, calve, feed), house building (rod, palisade, fence in, storehouse, corner post), tools (scythe, bobbin), kinship (father-in-law, mother-in-law), various verbs (bend, ask); cf. Golab ! (1991:8687); (ii) The fact that there are different centum ingredients in Slavic and in the Baltic languagesgoose, father-in-law, bank, etc. in Slavic, cattle, cheek, ask etc. in Baltic, andas mentioned abovegreat numerical differences among the languages; and
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(iii) Areal differences in word formation among the centum words, e.g., ante-Slavic *gil-tayellow (PS GIL-TA-, LCS z!"ltu"), but ante-Baltic *gel-tayellow (PB GEL-TA-, Li. geltonas), ante-Slavic *keh2 -mon- stone (PS kama n - , LCS kamy ), but ante-Baltic *h2 ek ! - mo n - stone (PB ak-mo n - , Li. akmuo%). A centum substratum is obviously not the only conceivable source of the discrepant dorsals. One should acknowledge the possibility that the preSlavicBaltic satm speakers colonized areas inhabited by pre-satm speakers, that is, speakers of a less advanced stage of their own form of speech. This would make it easier to understand one additional peculiarity, viz. (iv) the existence, in Lithuanian, of sets of lexical velar sibilant doublets, showing only a connotative difference in meaning, e.g., kvan%ksti svan%ksti breathe heavily, kum%pis sum%pis ham, kreketi kreseti to get strong, gnybti znybti to pinch, sliaug % ti sliauz %t i to crawl (Otreb ! ski 1958:333). The pattern of sound substitution in these doublets is not phonesthetically motivated in synchronic terms in either modern Lithuanian or Proto-Baltic (k s, g z). But it would have been at an earlier stage, when the alternants were k k, g g. This suggests that these examples are remnants of a (once productive?) pattern of expressive word formation involving an interchange of velar and palatal plosives, a pattern going back to before the Satm Assibilation (Otre!bski 1958:334; cf. Stang 1966:93). One can imagine that such an exploitation of the phonemic distinction of velars and palatals could easily arise in communities in which closely relatedpre-satm and satmtraditions of speaking were being intertwined. Discussion . Although most scholars would prefer to have just one explanation for the discrepant velar reflexes, there is really nothing to preclude the possibility that some of the words have one explanation and others, another. Gamkrelidze & Ivanov (1984:421) consider some items internally developed (that is, through sound change and analogy), and others centum borrowings. But a combination of borrowing and intrusions is just as possible. Language shift can easily be preceded and/or followed by a borrowing relation. Shevelov pooh-poohs the substratum idea, saying that As for the unknown centum-language since it is unknown [this explanation] cannot be either proved or disproved (1965:145). But in reality none of these explanation types is more clearly subject to proof or disproof than the others. Once we understand this we should abandon the long-standing practice of trying to resolve every issue on its own, in isolation from other issues, in accordance with the out-dated, nineteenth-century methodological principle of atomism. Where there is no hope of finding empirical corroboration or invalidation of our hypothesessuch as when we are dealing with the distant pastwe should try
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to explore to what extent possible hypothetical interpretations of different sets of data can be shown to cohere with one another. In the paragraphs above I enumerated four particulars that, however feebly, speak in favor of a substratum account of the discrepant dorsals. It is interesting that there are other irregular reflexes of Proto-Indo-European palatals (Baltic st) that appear to point to another, satm substratum. This should increase our confidence that this approach to interpretation is appropriate. The Ruki Change The Ruki Change is significantly related to the centum (or pre-satm) intrusions. The change of PIE *s to PS x, PB *s /{i, u, r, k} appears to precede the earliest phonological change known to yield different outcomes in Slavic and Baltic. The allophonic part of the change, which preceded the Satm Assibilation, was undoubtedly the same as in Indo-Iranian, viz. the development of a retroflex [s\] allophone in the Ruki environments. In the Satm Assibilation, this retroflex [s\] allophone first merged with pre-SlavicBaltic *k before obstruent; subsequently, in other environments, *k was identified with the principal [s] allophone in Slavic (PS s ), but with the retroflex [s\] in Baltic (PB s ) (cf. Andersen 1968); see Table 4. 2.2
Proto-Slavic *s After i, u, r, k before obstruent before vowel or sonorant Elsewhere s x s *k s s s Proto-Baltic *s s s s *k s s s
Table 4: Reflexes of PIE *s and *k in Slavic and Baltic
Later on, in recent prehistory, most known Baltic dialects merged hushing with hissing sibilants; they are sometimes called sigmatic dialects. Now only Lithuanian preserves the s : s and z : z distinctions. However, Lithuanian is spoken on a substratum of sigmatic dialects, and as a consequence, all Lithuanian dialects, including the standard language, have some lexemes with s, z as reflexes of PIE *k, *g(h) and with s for PIE *s in the Ruki environments; cf. Zinkevicius (1966:147148, 1987:19, 24, 26, 35, 40), Mayer (1994, 1996); the archaeological evidence of the population movements in the 400s800s, by which Lithuanian spread into its current areas, is summarized in Volkaite# Kulikau-skiene# 1987:154160; see also Andersen (1996:5861). Since such sigmatic forms result from language contact, apparent exceptions to the Ruki Change in Lithuanian cannot be taken at face value. To take an example that is
59
relevant to the topic at hand, the lack of a Ruki reflex in Li. klausyti ask (OPr. klausiton hear, PB klau-s-! ?) in Table 3 may be an indication that this centum (or pre-satm) intrusion was adopted after the Ruki Change, but it does not prove it, for the word may have undergone both the Ruki Change (PB klau-s-! ?) and the s > s change before entering Lithuanian from the sigmatic substratum. Slavic, on the other hand, has preserved its Ruki reflex of PIE *s, retracted (from *s\) to the reconstructed PS x , and eventually modified by the several palatalizations of velars in Slavic prehistory (yielding LCS s and s or s reflexes besides unchanged x); it has also been extended to morphological environments where it did not arise through the Ruki Change (Shevelov 1965:131, Andersen 1968). Now, here is the thing. While Slavic has several dozen lexemes with discrepant velar reflexes of Proto-Indo-European palatals, as we saw in Section 2.1, there are no exceptions to the Ruki Change other than in recent accessions; see Shevelov (1965:131). This fact severely limits the possible interpretations of the discrepant dorsals. If a significant number of discrepant-dorsal lexemes was adopted after the Ruki Change, one would expect them to be a subset of a much larger number of accessions, comprising both criterial (with discrepant dorsals) and non-criterial lexemes, and among both subsets one would expect to find some with unchanged PIE *s in Ruki environments, in the style of Li. klausyti ask. But the Slavic languages appear to have none. This can only mean that the discrepant-dorsal lexemes, and the contemporary non-criterial lexemes, were introduced before the Ruki Change, that is, at the latest at a time when Ruki retroflection was allophonic and was applied to any new material that was integrated into the language. Examples would be PS kermaux-, PB kerm(a)us- in Table 3, discrepant-dorsal intrusions with Ruki reflexes in both Slavic and Baltic. To put it differently, although one cannot exclude the possibility that some of the lexemes from the discrepant-dorsals stratum are post-Ruki Change accessions, the absence of any Slavic lexemes with PIE *s unaffected by the Ruki Change suggests that (most of) the discrepant-dorsal ingredients were adopted before the Satm Assibilation. This inference corroborates the interpretation of the Lithuanian k s, g z doublets proposed in Section 2.1.2: they were formed before the Satm Assibilation. At the same time it raises doubt about Goa!bs account of the centum ingredients (see Section 1.2.3), which was constructed without any attention to the Ruki Change. Dual reflexes of syllabic sonorants Both Slavic and Baltic have dual reflexes of Proto-Indo-European syllabic sonorants. For reconstructed PIE *m, *n, *l!, *r ! (abbreviated R ) we have 2.3
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reflexes of PS, PB im, in, ir, il (iR) and um, un, ur, ul (uR) in the various attested languages. As in the case of the discrepant dorsals, Slavic and Baltic have slightly different lexical distributions of iR and uR reflexes. In a sample of 215 lexemes shared by Slavic and Baltic, 36 (17%) are attested only with uR reflexes, 22 (10%) with both reflexes in the same language or language group, or with one in Slavic and the other in Baltic, and the remaining 157 (73%) are attested only with iR. See Table 5. As one might expect, these dual reflexes have been approached in several ways. Sound change. The phonetic difference between the two sets of reflexes naturally suggests that they are phonologically conditioned. Kuryowicz (1956:227242) surveyed the lexical sample included in Trautmanns (1924) Balto-Slavic dictionary, but found no phonologically consistent distribution, except that in one positionfollowing a reflex of PIE *k!, *g, or *gSlavic and Baltic have only iR reflexes. Shevelov (1965:8691) presents a fuller and more detailed analysis of the Slavic data, but in the end demonstrates only that the distribution of the dual reflexes is not reducible to phonological conditioning. Language shift. In Stangs judgement (1966:79), Kuryowiczs statistics proved only that iR reflexes are much more frequent than uR reflexes, but Stang made some additional observations. First, Slavic and Baltic grammatical morphemes have iR reflexes, but no uR reflexes. Secondly, iR reflexes participate in productive ablaut alternations, but uR reflexes do not. The inference to be drawn from these observations is that the iR reflexes are part of the SlavicBaltic linguistic heritage. Significantly, this dovetails with the fact that only iR reflexes occur after Proto-Indo-European palatals. Far from being a case of phonological conditioning, the correlation of satm reflexes and iR reflexes simply tells us that in these satm dialects, iR was the regular result of the diphthongization of syllabic sonorants. But how are the uR reflexes to be explained, then? First of all, the Slavic and Baltic discrepant-dorsal words include items with PIE *R. Some of these have uR reflexes: SC krdo (similarly Sn, Sk), LCS ku"rdo herd, flock, PS kurda- (cf. PS kerda- in Table 3). Others have iR reflexes: OCS klet $ ikl!n " o$ se$ take an oath (PS klin-, cf. klan-! bend in Table 3); LCS z!l " tu" yellow (cf. PS gilta- in Table 3), LCS z!"rd!" rod (PS girdi-; cf. PS garda- in Table 3). However, this is precisely the same distribution one finds in lexemes in which syllabic sonorants are preceded by other segments. Here, too, uR reflexese.g., La. pur!#ns lip, Li. burna` (PB purna- burna-; cf. Section 3.2), OPr. dumsle bladder, Li. du`mti to blow (PB dum-, cf. PS dum, OCS do$tidu"mo$ to blow), OPr. lunkan, La. lu#ks, Li. lu`nkas bast (PB lunka-, cf. PS luka-, LCS lyko)contrast the iR reflexese.g., OPr. pirmas
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PS p!r-wa-, LCS p!"rvu" first, R pervyj. PB p!r-ma-, OPr. pirmas first, La. p`rma%s, Li. p`rmas. PIE *pr-h-wo-/-mo-. Cf. Skt. purva-, Av. paurva-, OE forwost. PS g!rnu-, LCS z!"rnyz!"rnu"ve handmill, quern, R zernov. PB g!rna-, OPr. girnoywis quern, La. dzir%nas, Li. g`rnos. PIE *gerh-. Skt. gravan- muller, Arm. erkan, Go. (asilu-)qairnus, OHG kuerna. PS kurp-ja-, LCS d. ku"rplja shoe, Sn. krplje snowshoes. PB kurp-ja-, OPr. kurpe shoe, La. kur%pe, Li. ku`rpe&. PIE *kerh1p-. Cf. Gk. krepis high boot, Lat. carpisculum shoe. PS du m - , OCS do $ t idu " m o $ blow, R dut . PB du m - , OPr. dumsle bladder, Li. du`mti blow. PIE *du-m-. Cf. Skt. dhamati blows, Gk. thumos, Lat. fumus smoke. PB er-um-be-, Li. d. jerumbe%& grouse. But PS er-im-bi-, LCS jereb $ !" grouse. PIE *h3er-n\b-. Cf. Go. ara, Gk. ornis bird, Hitt. haras, haranas eagle. PS un-, OCS vu"(n) in. But PB in-, Li. i$, in%- in. PIE *n. PS kur-a-, LCS ku"ru" root; bush. But PB kir-na-, OPr. kirno bush, Li. k`rna stump. PIE *ker-. Cf. La. cers, Li. ke%ras bush PS gin- LCS ze$tiz!"mo$ cut, harvest. PB gun-, OPr. guntwei drive, but PB gin-, gin-tla-, Li. gin%ti strike, drive, gin % k las weapon. PIE *gen- . Cf. Skt. ha n ti slays, Hitt. kuenzi kills, Gk. theno, Ir. benim strike, Lat. defendo. PS tim-a-, OCS t!"ma darkness. PB tum-sa-, La. tu`msa darkness, Li. d. tumsa`, st. tamsa` idem, but PB tim-sa-, La. t`msa darkness. PIE *tem(h)-. Cf. Skt. tamas- darkness, Av. tmah-, OIr. temel, Lat. tenebrae, OHG demar twilight. PS stulba- , LCS stu"lbu" post. PB stulba- , Li. stul%pas pillar, La. stu`lbs shin, but PB stilba-, La. stil%bs forearm. PIE *stel-b-/ *stel-p-. Cf. ON stolpi post. PS gur-tla-, LCS gu " r dlo throat, but PS gi!r-, OCS z!"ro$ swallow, eat. PB gur-tla-, Li. gurkly % s idem, but PB g ! r - , Li. g` r tas drunk. PIE *gerh3- . Cf. Skt. g r ati swallows, Av. gar- swallowing-, Arm. ker I ate, Gk. bibrosko eat, Lat. voro. Table 5: Dual reflexes of syllabic sonorants
first, La. p`rma!%s, Li. p`rmas (PB p!rma-, cf. PS pirwa- , LCS p!"rvu"), Li. tingu`s heavy (PB tingu-, cf. PS tingu-ka- LCS te$gu"ku"), OPr. limtwei to break, Li. l`mti (cf. PS lem-!- to break, LS lemic)not to mention wordinitial PS un, OCS vu( " n) in(to), but PB in, La. !, Li. i!$ in(to). This suggests that all the lexemes with uR reflexes (or with uR iR doublets) reflect contact with dialects in which syllabic sonorants had a different development. Perhaps there was an areal difference between the dialects from which discrepant-dorsal lexemes were adoptedsome having changed syllabic sonorants to *uR (as in Germanic), others to *iR. Or there may have been a chronological difference: early accessions from substratum dialects with syllabic sonorants would be diphthongized to *iR, whereas later accessions, when the (pre-) SlavicBaltic dialects no longer had syllabic sonorants, were adopted with u-diphthongs (uR) in (pre-)SlavicBaltic. Here it has to be understood that some accessions were mere variants of inherited pre-Slavic or pre-Baltic items. Stang (1966:7980) made an additional, important observation about Baltic iR and uR diphthongs, which is relevant also to Slavic: many words containing uR diphthongs in these languages have expressive value, they are lexemes meaning (i) fat, dumb, lazy, clumsy, (ii) crooked, bent, (iii) crippled, decrepit, (iv) dark, dirty, or (v) they are onomatopoeic. These are semantic
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categories in which other languages too have u + sonorant combinations (cf. Eng. plump, dumb, bungle, bulky, clumsy, glum, dumpy, sulky, blunder, blunt, etc.; Gm. dumm, dumpf, stumm, stumpf, plump, etc.). They evidently reflect a universal sensesound connection (Jakobson & Waugh 1979:179, 184187, see also Rhodes and Lawler 1981). Hence they may have been innovated at various times during the long prehistory of these languages and, if so, have no bearing on the (pre-)SlavicBaltic diphthongizations of PIE *R to PS, PB iR. Still, among the possibly expressive words with iR/uR diphthongs there are some doublets; see Table 4. In such pairs, the iR-forms can be taken as an indication that before the diphthongization, they had a syllabic *R\ in the preSlavicBaltic satm dialects. After the diphthongization, iR nuclei might have been subject to expressive replacement with uR , motivated by the universal phonesthetic value of the back-vowel diphthong. But also, in any contact situation with a closely related *R > uR dialect, uR and iR variants would have occurred in usage side by side, and the same motivation would have supported a preference for the variants with uR. Word-initial laryngeals The regular reflexes of initial laryngeal + *e in Slavic and Baltic are PS, PB e- for PIE *h1e- and PS, PB a- for *h2e- and *h3e-. However, in a number of lexemes Proto-Slavic and Proto-Baltic have irregular reflexes of such initial sequences. There are two cases to consider. 2.4 2.4.1 Rozwadowskis Change. In a number of lexemes, Proto-Slavic and/or Proto-Baltic have initial e- or doublets with initial e- a- for PIE *h2e- and *h3e-, a peculiarity first described by Rozwadowski (1915). See Table 6. It must be mentioned that both language groups have had a change in recent prehistory (perhaps around the beginning of our era) of initial e- to a- with characteristic geographical distributions of the reflexes, disturbed, however, by the Slavic territorial expansion as well as by the westward displacement of the Lithuanians (cf. Section 2.2). The reflexes of this recent change are: in Slavic, mainly o- in Russian, otherwise commonly o- in central dialects, je- in peripheral Slavic dialects; in Baltic, mainly a- in Old Prussian, in eastern Lithuanian dialects a-, elsewhere in Lithuanian and in Latvian, e-). Although the recent changes obscure the reflexes of the proto-language initials somewhat, the distinction between PS and PB e- and a- is clear enough, and it is clear as well that the recent changes affected PS, PB e- from *h1e- and from *h2e- and *h3e- on equal terms (Andersen 1996:88112). Remarkably, most of the examples of Rozwadowskis Change show morphological differences between the Slavic and Baltic languages. Consider the
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difference between PS al-k-u-ti- and PB el-k-u-n-e- elbow, both apparently sharing one layer of derivation and then diverging. Or consider the difference between PS el-i-x-a- al-i-x-a- and PB el-s-ni- al-s-nialder, where the morphological difference provided different environments for the Ruki Change.
PS al-k-u-ti- elbow, LCS olku"t!", R lokot . PB el-k-u-n-e- al-k-u-n-e- elbow, OPr. alkunis, La. e`lkuons, Li. alkune#, d. elkune#. PIE *hx h3-el-. Cf. Skt. aratn-, Av. arthna-, Gr. olene, ollon, Lat. ulna (*olena), OIr. ulen, Go. aleina, OHG elina. PS el-au-a- al-au-a- lead (Pb), Bg. o. elav(o), elsewhere *o-: R olovo. PB el-u-a- al-u-a, OPr. elwas tin, alwis lead, La. al!#vs tin, Li. alvas idem. PS elix-a- al-i-x-a- alder, R olxa, SC jelsa, d. jelha. PB el-s-ni- al-s-ni- al-is-nialder, OPr. alisknas (Abskande), La. a`lksna, Li. el%ksnis, al`ksnis. Ante-IE *al(V)s-. Cf. Mac. alidza (Hesych.), Lat. ulnus (*alisnos), OHG elira, Gm. Erle, ON o$lr, jo$lstr willow, Fr. alise rowanberry (< Gaul. *alisia). PS epsa- apsa- aspen Populus tremula, R osa, osina. PB ep(u)se- apse-, OPr abse, La. apse , Li. a%puse, e%puse (contaminated with pusi`s pine). Ante-IE (?) *asp-. Cf. OHG aspa. PS erila- arila- eagle LS jerjo, elsewhere *o-: R orel. PB erelia-, OPr. arelie, La. e`rglis, Li. ere%lis. PIE *h3er- . Cf. Go. ara , Eng. erne , Gk. o r nis bird, Hitt. haras, haranas eagle. PS esera - prickly stuff, P d. jesiora fish bone. PB eseria- aseria- perch Perca fluvialis, La. asers, Li. esery%s. PIE *h2ek-er-o-. Cf. OHG ahira, Gm. Ahre, Eng. ear (of grain), PIE *h2ek-er-a-. Slavic and Baltic have a- in the underlying adjective and all other derivatives: OCS ostru" pointed, Li. astru`s idem. PS eseti-, P d. jesiec grain sieve, R oset grain rack. PB eketia- harrow, OPr. aketes, La. ecesas, Li. akecios, d. ekecios. PIE *h2ek-. Cf. OHG egida, Lat. occa (< *oteka *oketa), Gk. oksina (Hesych.). Table 6: PS, PB e- for PIE *h2e-, *h3e-
Or note the different ablaut grades in PS el-au-a- al-au-a- and PB el-u-a- alu-a- tin, or the satm and centum (pre-satm) reflexes of PIE *k in PS es-e-tirack and PB ek-e-ti-a- harrow. All these differences must have developed subsequent to Rozwadowskis Change. If one assumes the contrary, it is impossible to understand why a change in a word-initial vowel would have affected predominantly (actually seven out of eleven) synonymous lexemes with morphologically distinct by-forms in different (ante-)SlavicBaltic dialects while leaving dozens of other lexemes with initial PS, PB a - untouched. The morphological differences clearly go back to before the Satm Change (cf. harrow) and the Ruki Change (cf. alder) and remind one of the morphological differences among the centum (pre-satm) accessions mentioned in Section 2.1.2. One can conclude, then, that Rozwadowskis Change is older than the dialectal differentiation reflected in these morphological differences. Even more remarkable, considering the early date of the change, is this: if the Rozwadowski lexemes are plotted on a virtual mapassuming the same geographical disposition of (pre-)Latvian, (pre-)Lithuanian and Common Slavic
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as at the beginning of our eraone can discern (or construe) spatial relations among the e- a- reflexes which, if they are not a mirage, amount to a pale reflection of the changes extension in a central region of a presumable anteSlavicBaltic dialect continuum. In Slavic, the e- doublets in PS elaua- and erila-, which are limited to one language each, may have been northern before the migrations, that is, contiguous to Baltic (or quasi-Baltic) dialects with e-. Otherwise a- variants occur mostly in western Slavic dialects; in Baltic, there are more a- doublets in Latvian than in Lithuanian, and more in Old Prussian than in the East Baltic languages (Andersen 1996:99101). This virtual geographical difference is similar to the differences in the distribution of lexical doublets with velar and sibilant reflexes of PIE *k, *g(h) (Section 2.1.2), where a central area represented by Lithuanian shows a greater concentration of discrepant dorsals than the peripheral areas to the north (Latvian) and south (Common Slavic). There is no way of accounting for Rozwadowskis Change as a purely phonological change in pre-Slavic and pre-Baltic (Andersen 1996:103). But of course the discrepant PS, PB e- forms may reflect a regular change in some anteSlavicBaltic dialect. If they are to be understood as intrusions, as their geographical distribution suggests, there are several possible interpretations. The most likely seems to be that (i) the e- forms reflect substratum dialects with a markedly different realization of open vowels than the prevailing dialects. If the substratum had, say, e [] vs. a [a], but the prevailing dialect e [] vs. a [], individual substratum forms with a [a] might have been interpreted by speakers of the prevailing dialect as having e []. Or (ii) perhaps they reflect a substratum that after the loss of laryngeals had merged its low vowels in []. In such a situation, substratum variants without the (initial) vowel distinctions might easily intrude into the tradition of the prevailing dialect. (See further Andersen 1996:111112.) Be this as it may, the fact of the change and the pale reflection of its apparent geographical distribution are data that point to a distant anteSlavicBaltic substratum. 2.4.2 Initial PS k-. In a small number of lexemes the Slavic languages have an initial k- of uncertain origin, in part with correspondences in other IndoEuropean languages, in one lexeme with doublets within Slavic; see Table 7. Gamkrelidze & Ivanov (1984:129132) have attempted to give a phonological account of these correspondences, positing a separate phoneme, PIE *q (postvelar or uvular) and supposing that this stop consistently either merged with another phoneme or was lost in the attested languages. But their account does not explain why this segment would have irregular reflexes in all the lexemes in which it is posited and in all the languages in which it has reflexes; see Table 7.
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In fact, since the posited *q has no basis in regular correspondences at all, it is, as the authors duly acknowledge, very speculative. It would be more realistic to ascribe the doublets to interaction between dialects with segmental realizations of (initial) laryngeals and dialects with no exact match for these and substituting k- for them. Note that from a semantic point of view, all of the examples except Gk. ke%pos monkey (and its cognates), which is an obvious Wanderwort, would be typical intrusions. Though of course a Wanderwort could easily be present in a substratum and intrude into a prevailing dialect to which it was previously unknown.
PS kasti- bone, OCS kost!". Lat. costa, Hitt. hastai. But Lat. osossis, Skt. asthi, Av. asti-, Gk. osteon, Alb. asht, ashte. PIE *h3est-. PS kaza - goat, OCS koza . Alb. keth , OE he c en kid. But PS az(i)na-, ChS (j)az!n " o (goat-)skin, Li. ozy%s (PB azia-), Skt. ajah\, MIran. asak. PIE *h2eg-. PS kal-en-a- knee, OCS koleno. Li. kelenas, ke%lis knee, Hitt. halii!a- kneel, Gk. koleps back of knee. But PS alkuti-, OCS laku"t!", Li. uolekt`s, alkune&, Lat. ulna ( *olina), Gk. o l e n e , Skt. an\!h\ thigh ( *olnis ), aratn ! h \ elbow ( *oln-tn- ). PIE *hx eh3-l- *hx h3-el-. Gk. karuon nut, Panj. karua ( *karu-k). But OCS orexu", Li. ruosuty%s, Gk. arua, Alb. arre. PIE *h2er h2r-. Go. hatan, hatis hate; hatred, W cawdd anger, cas anger, Osc. cadeis enmity; g.sg.. But Lat. odiosus hate, Gk. odus(s)asthai get angry, Arm. ateam hate, OE atol ugly. PIE *h3ed-. Lat. coram face to face. But Skt. ah\asah\ mouth, Av. ah-, Lat. osoris, MIr. a mouth; gen.sg., Hitt. aisissas, ON oss river mouth. Gk. ke%pos (ke%pos), Skt. kap- monkey. But ON api, OW apa, Celt. abranos (Hesych.). Table 7: Initial PS k- for PIE *hx-
The doublets OCS koza goat LCS (j)az!"no (goat-)skin deserve special comment. LCS (j)az!"no (PS az-in-a-) and its derivatives (jaz!n " enu" of skin, leather, jaz!"njarj!" tanner) are attested only in Serbian Church Slavic and Russian Church Slavic; they were evidently limited to a small area before as well as after the Slavic expansion. LCS (j)az!"no is itself derived, but it has no base word in Slavic. The base word is present in all the Baltic languages: OPr. Woasis, La. a#zs, Li. ozy%s m., ozka` f. On the other hand, OCS koza has numerous derivatives, some of which supersede those of (j)az!n " o (ChS kozanu" of skin, leather, kozev!n " iku" tanner). Most prominent among its derivatives is OCS koz!l " u" billy-goat (PS kaz-il-a-), formed with an uncommon, unproductive suffix (Sawski 1974:113). PS, PB az- corresponds to PIE *h2eg- (cf. Skt. aja- billy-goat, ajagoat, ajna- goatskin) and shows vowel lengthening (prior to the Satm Assibilation) according to Winters Law (pace Campanile 1994). OCS koza, on the other hand, is impossible to etymologize as part of the inherited lexical stock
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of Slavic (Trubacev [1979] vol. 12, 1985:1921). But if we suppose it is an intrusion, both its irregular initial, and its exceptional lack of Winter lengthening become understandable. And so, perhaps, does its odd suffix, which is almost as isolated, lexically, in Baltic (Otreb ! ski 1965:121) as in Slavic.5 The lexemes with k- for PIE *h2, *h3 are few, but sufficiently widespread among the Indo-European languages to call for a single explanation. If one can extrapolate from PS kaza-, the Slavic k-lexemes were current in ante-Slavic Indo-European dialects spoken in areas that became Slavic speaking. They may have arisen in interaction between early Indo-European speakers who had (initial) laryngeals and non-Indo-European speakers who rendered these with k-. If this interpretation is to be extended to other Indo-European areas, one has to hypothesize that there, too, the Indo-European-speaking groups we know settled in areas that already had Indo-European-speaking populations and perhaps had had them for a long time. We will return to this seemingly reasonable hypothesis immediately below. Conclusions In the preceding pages we have examined several sets of irregular correspondences that point to a series of Indo-European, ante-SlavicBaltic strata, (i)(v): (i) Baltic st for PIE *k in Baltic (Section 2.1.1); (ii) Slavic and Baltic velars for PIE *k, *g(h) (Section 2.1.2); (iii) Slavic and Baltic uR diphthongs for PIE *R\ (Section 2.3); (iv) Slavic and Baltic e- for PIE *h2e-, *h3e- (Section 2.4.1); (v) Slavic k- for PIE *h2-, *h3- (Section 2.4.2). Judging by their character, all but (i) may be centum substrata, and all but (i) may be pre-satm dialects. While (ii) and (iii) may include both centum and pre-satm dialects, this distinction may not be relevant to strata (iv), and (v). These two strata reflect a considerable morphological differentiation of the anteSlavicBaltic dialects. Judging by the small numbers of examples in each, (iv) and (v) are earlier strata than (ii) and (iii). By its phonetic character, (v) alone suggests contact with an ante-Indo-European substratum. Taken together the data suggest the picture of successive waves of IndoEuropean-speaking settlers, each wave absorbing into its tradition of speaking elements of the local dialects as the locals adopted the phonologically more 3.
5
To conserve space I omit discussion of Winters (1978) Law. Evidently the correspondences it captures are easy to understand as the result of a regular sound change if such exceptions as PS wada-, LCS voda water and PB wada- in La. vada forest bog and several Slavic and Baltic toponyms (Schmid 1986) are understood as intrusions from ante-SlavicBaltic IndoEuropean dialects.
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advanced, prevailing dialect of the newcomers. (i) Some Baltic dialects overlay satm dialects with st for PIE *k. (ii) Slavic and Baltic dialects overlay pre-satm dialects as well as, presumably, centum dialects; both may have contributed lexemes with discrepant dorsals, PS, PB k, g for PIE *k, *g(h). (iii) Both presatm dialects and centum dialects may have been sources of PS, PB uR ingredients. (iv) In a central area, Slavic and Baltic dialects overlay dialects with Rozwadowski reflexes of PIE *h2e-, *h3e- from a much earlier substratum. (v) In one area, the Slavic tradition of speaking incorporated lexemes with PS kfor PIE *h2, *h3, perhaps going back to the earliest Indo-European contact with ante-Indo-European speakers. Supporting evidence The evidence for Indo-European strata preceding Slavic and Baltic that has been presented here is perhaps not overwhelming. It will be strengthened if and when the criterial ingredients of the various strata, which are all we can identify on phonological grounds, are correlated with contemporary non-criterial onesif that can be done. But the data that have been surveyed here are at least suggestive. As suggested in Section 2.1.2, it would be wrong to insist that every part of the evidence for linguistic prehistory be firm enough to stand up in a court of law. Indeed, we should not ask what our data can prove, for that may be very little or nothing at all. We should ask what our data can tell us, and how what we can infer from our data might be consistent with what we can learn, perhaps equally hypothetically, from other sources. To test our conclusions, then, we need to consider other perspectives on the prehistorical development than the one reviewed here to see if they might point to similar conclusions. I will mention three such perspectives, which shed light on questions of geography, chronology, and substance. 3.1 3.1.1 The location of Slavs and Balts. First of all, it was assumed all along in Section 2 that the Slavic and Baltic dialects previously formed a dialect continuum in east central Europe (cf. Section 1.1), and that in this continuum, forerunner dialects of Latvian, of Lithuanian, and of Slavic had long been located relative to one another more or less as they were on the eve of the Slavic expansions, at the beginning of our era. This assumption was useful in interpreting the geographical distribution of discrepant dorsals, of Rozwadowski reflexes, and of the Slavic k- for *h2, *h3 reflexes. There are other data that speak in favor of it. It is generally recognized that there were close relations between Baltic speakers and Finnic speakers in prehistory, but the Slavs are not believed to have
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had any contact with Finnic-speaking populations before their territorial expansion in the Middle Ages. It is interesting, then, to observe that the modern Slavic and East Baltic languages all have lexemes in which the inherited distinction between wordinitial tenues (ptk-obstruents) and mediae (bdg-obstruents) has been disturbed, resulting in dialectally distributed doublet forms. There are not many such doublets in Slavic (see Table 8), maybe a dozen (Shevelov 1965:364366). There are more in Lithuanian; Otre!bski (1958:323325) lists about fifty pairs. Latvian has rather many, some three hundred pairs, according to Endzelin (1923:2324). There is some overlap from language to language in these sets (Schmalstieg & Jegers 1971:75).
PS kraux-ja- ! graux-ja- pear: LCS grusa, in Pb., P, Cz., Sk., Sn., U, Br., cf. R grusa. But LCS krusa in Ka., P d., LS, US, SC, cf. Bg. krusa. PB kreusia-, OPr. crausy, La. krau#sis, Li. kriause&, d. krause&. PS kraux-! - ! graux-! - crush. LCS krus i ti in OCS, P, Cz., Sn., SC, U, cf. R krusit destroy. But LCS grus i ti in Cz., SC, Bg. d., cf. R d. grusit destroy, break; crush (psychologically). PS kulpi- ! gulbi- swan; heron, LCS ku"lpi!" ! gu"lbi!", P d. kieb swan, SC d. kuf pelican, SC d. gub swan. OPr. gulbis, La. gu`lbis, Li. gul%be& swan. PIE *gelp-. PS purna- ! burna- lip, LCS pu"rna ! bu"rna, Sk. perna , Bg. bu " r na lip. La. pur!#ns, d. pur!#na snout, Li. burna` mouthful. PIE purhx -. Cf. Arm. beran mouth, Hitt. puri lip. PS tup-ut-a- ! dup-ut-a- stamp, LCS tu"pu"tati ! du"pu"tati, P deptac (thus West Slavic), R toptat (East and South Slavic). Cf. Cz. dupati stamp, PS daup-a-tei, LCS dupati, La. d. dupe # t ie # s resound, d. staupe stamping of hooves. PIE *tup- . Cf. Skt. tupati, tumpati strike, Gk. tupto (*tupjo) strike, tupos stamp. Table 8: Slavic doublets with voiced and voiceless obstruents
Endzelin (1923:2324) cautiously ascribed the Latvian doublets to the centuries of contact between Latvian and Livonian, which like the other Finnic languages lacks a tenuis vs. media opposition in word-initial position. Kiparsky (1968) more boldly reached back to the first contacts between Baltic and Finnic speakers in the centuries after 2000 B . C ., which are documented by the archaeological record (Volkaite# Kulikauskiene# 1987:68). But while there is little doubt about these contacts, which are evidenced by hundreds of Baltic lexical ingredients in the Finnic languages and a small number in Volga-Finnic, there is no comparable evidence of prehistorical contact between Slavic and Finnic speakers. It is a question, then, how Slavic came by its discrepant-voicing doublets. It does not make sense to imagine that such deviant lexeme shapes as those in Table 8 filtered through Baltic-speaking areas from a BalticFinnic contact zone in the north to a presumable BalticSlavic transitional area in the south. It is more reasonable to suppose that these lexemes reflect an early,
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relatively brief contact episode, possibly in an area where pre-Slavic speakers were succeeded by pre-Lithuanian speakers, and these again by pre-Latvian speakers, who have then remained in contact with Finnic down through the centuries. Or perhaps a gradation in discrepant-voicing lexemes existed already in the Indo-European substratum dialects that were absorbed into these Slavic and Baltic traditions of speaking? Whichever way the discrepant-voicing doublets arose, their distribution across these language areas is consistent with the idea that the spatial relations among the languages in these areas have been stable for thousands of years. 3.1.2 Indo-European ingredients in Finnic. Secondly, one extremely useful sidelight on the ante-SlavicBaltic strata is the stratification of Indo-European ingredients in Finno-Ugric, especially Finnic. Indeed, the Slavic lexemes with kfor PIE *h2-, *h3-, mentioned in Section 2.4.2 recall identical reflexes in IndoEuropean ingredients in Finnic (see below). Redei (1988) has been developing a careful synthesis that recognizes three main Indo-European strata, based on the differentiation of Uralic. The earliest is Proto-Uralic (with seven etyma). The source of these etyma he characterizes as pre-Iranian (Vorarisch), and their time of accession as ca. 4000 B .C . The second stratum is Proto-Finno-Ugric (eighteen etyma). Its source is Proto-Iranian (Urarisch). Its accessions were integrated before 3000 B.C. and reflect stages in the development of Iranian: early accessions have non-sibilant reflexes of PIE *k, *g,*g, later ones have sibilant reflexes; early accessions distinguish *e", *a", *o", later ones show their merger in *a". The third stratum (seventeen etyma) includes both Finno-Permian and FinnoVolgaic. Its accessions may have been integrated between ca. 2000 and ca. 500 B.C. Here an early layer has sibilants for PIE *k, *g, *g, but preserves the *e", *a", *o" distinctions; a later layer merges these in *a". In a more recent work, Redei (1997), expands the third stratum to forty-eight etyma and tentatively elaborates the chronologicalcorrelationsbetweenUralic and Indo-European. Koivulehto (1991, 1997, 2000) has produced several dozen new etymologies representing five strata of Indo-European ingredients mainly in Western Finnic (BaltoFinnic), seriated on the basis of source-language phonology. The earliest, essentially Proto-Indo-European stratum, which Koivulehto identifies as NorthWest-Indo-European and dates to the period 32002350 B .C ., shows variant reflexes of Proto-Indo-European laryngeals, *k in initial and *s in word-internal position as in Table 9. This variation reflects Proto-Finnic phonotactics (initial fricatives are not admitted) and incidentally proves that the laryngeals were fricatives. The lexemes in this earliest stratum reflect the primitive forest agriculture the Indo-Europeans presumably practiced, burnt-over clearing, leaf-hay, pasture, grass, pig, millet, wheat, to winnow, dough, ale. The later strata, which I will not detailArchaic Proto-Indo-Iranian,
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Early Proto-Indo-Iranian, Proto-Indo-Iranian, and Proto-Iraniandiffer by their reflexes (i) of PIE *k, *g, *g and *k, *g, *g before front vowel, (ii) of PIE *k, *g,*gh, and (iii) of PIE *e.
Fi. kesa summer. PIE *h1es-en- harvest time, summer. Cf. PS, PB es-en-i- LCS jesen!", R osen autumn, OPr. assenis idem. Cf. Go. asans harvest, summer, OHG arn, aran, Gm. Ernte harvest. Fi. kasa sharp point, edge < *kaca. PIE *h2ak-ja-. Cf. PGmc. *agjo > OHG ekka point, edge, Gm. Ecke; PS, PB ast-ra- pointed, es-e-ti ek-e-ti-harrow, OCS ostru", jeset, Li. astru`s, ekecios. Fi. kaski burnt-over clearing < *kaske. PIE *h2azgV-. Cf. PGmc. *askon-, ON aska, OHG aska ashes). Fi. lehti leaf, blade < *leste. PIE *ble h1-to-. Cf. PGmc. *bla(a-, ON bla(, OHG blat, Gm. Blatt, Eng. blade. PIE *bleh1-to-. Cf. PGmc. *ble(a-, OE bld blossom, sprout. Table 9: Indo-European ingredients in Finnic with segmental reflexes of laryngeals
Redei (1997:146) considers it possible that there were early contacts between Uralic and Indo-Europeans if the latters homeland was in the Russian steppes. He evidently thinks in terms of adstratum relations. Koivulehtos idea of identifying the earliest Finnic stratum with North-West-Indo-European suggests a very different conception of the geo-demographic conditions under which F i n n ir ce c e i v eld exica alc c e s s i o n fs rom I n d o - E u r o p e dialects. an In this conception, the Indo-European elements in Finnic result from a long series of contact episodes in prehistory and presuppose that groups of Indo-Europeanspeakers at various times migrated up the major rivers of Eastern Europethe Volga, the Don, the Dniepr, and their tributariesinto the parklands and the forest zone and settled in areas with an ambient Finnic-speaking population. Some of the Indo-European ingredients may have entered Finnic as cultural borrowings, others as intrusions whenever a group of Indo-European settlers shifted to Finnic. This is very similar to what is suggested by the anteSlavicBaltic strata discussed in Section 2. The Indo-European strata in Finnic provide the justification for assuming that successive groups of Indo-European colonists settled also in areas in which there already was an established IndoEuropean-speakingpopulation. The contact situations were obviously different in these two linguistic environments. And so were their consequences for us. Where Finnic prevailed, the layers of Indo-European ingredients can be separated from the inherited Finnic elements. Their regular correspondences with stages of Indo-European make them susceptible to etymological analysis. By contrast, the task of teasing apart the similar layers in Slavic and Balticor the
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other North-West Indo-European languagesis more problematic, though it may not be impossible. 3.1.3 Layers of nomination. A third source of corroboration for the strata characterized in Section 2 is the very lexicon of the languages in question. It has always been a riddle how it came about that the Slavic and Baltic languages, while sufficiently similar to suggest a common origin (Proto-BaltoSlavic), and developing side by side for thousands of years under natural and technological conditions that must have been fairly similar, came to be so different. Leaving the similarities of structure aside and considering just the lexicon, there are indeed several hundred lexemes in Common Slavic that have etymological equivalents or near-equivalents in Baltic. On the other hand, however, there is not a single semantic field in which there are not deep differences in the corresponding lexis. Rozwadowski (1912) was the first to emphasize this problem in his review of Meillet (1905, 1908) and other contemporary works on the Balto-Slavic problem. He illustrated this point with examples from such semantic fields as body parts, animals, plants, the earth, humans, dwellings, spiritual concepts, activities and actions, in each of which the most basic concepts are expressed in Slavic and Baltic with etymologically unrelated words. The common opinion has it that all such differences are of secondary origin, more recent than the inherited similarities. This view forms part of Goab ! s theory, cf. Figure 1. But if one looks closely at the terminology for the physical environment in which these peoples lived, another possibility suggests itself. In the terminology for the flora, to take just one single example, Slavic and Baltic have related words for many treesash, apple, aspen, birch, linden, mistletoe, to name a few. But in some basic tree names they differ significantly. The religious significance of the yew, which is reflected in Hittite, Celtic, and Germanic folklore, has been transferred to the juniper (another evergreen hardwood) in both Slavic and Baltic (Toporov [1979] vol. 2, 1980:111117). Since the yew does not occur in Eastern Europe, this is understandable. The Slavic name for juniper (LCS moz e vlj !" ) is a native formation, but etymologically opaque. The Baltic name has precise correspondences in Finnic (OPr. kadegis, La. kadekis, Li. kadagy%s. PFi. kataka, Fi. kataja, without etymology). Still, the Indo-European word for yew (PIE *ei-/*oi- + *-o-, *-wo-, *-ko-, Hitt. eia, OIr. eo, OHG !w a, Gm. Eibe, OE !w , Eng. yew; cf. Gamkrelidze & Ivanov 1984:62931), is reflected in these languages. It means willow Salix in Slavic (PS eiwa-, LCS iva), but bird cherry Prunus padus in Baltic (La. ieva, Li. ieva`). (Contrast PS kerm-aux-ja-, PB kerm-(a)us-, etc. in Table 3.)
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We cannot assume that the people that transferred the functions of the yew to the juniper, but not its name, kept the word for yew in reserve to assign it to other trees later. Nor can we assume that the people who transferred the name of the yew to the willow and those that first used it for the bird-cherry had identical background or even similar experience of the natural environment. (The yew is evergreen, the willow and bird-cherry are deciduous, the yew has needles, the others are broadleaved, the yew is poisonous, willow leaves are medicinal, and bird-cherries, edible, the list goes on.) We have to assume that in one period, the original name for the yew was avoided, gradually yielded completely to the neologisms for the juniper, and eventually was forgotten. Similarly, we must assume that the willow and the bird-cherry were named at different times, and that the names the trees have now became established as final resolutions of variable usagewhich is what would happen in any normal speech community. If we proceed on the assumption that the vocabulary of these languages is the result of multiple layers of nomination, then their lexical divergences for even the most elementary concepts is not such a mystery. This assumption jibes with the data presented in Section 2. It defines a potentially productive avenue for the investigation of Slavic and Baltic prehistory. The Indo-European migrations In this paper I have presented phonological evidence to show that preSlavs and pre-Balts were not the first Indo-Europeans to inhabit the areas in which they settled. A scrutiny of several sets of irregular correspondences leads to the conclusion that early Slavic and Baltic traditions of speaking melded with other, local Indo-European dialects, which in turn had absorbed elements from even earlier dialect strata that were probably rather similar, though surely palpably different from place to place. Many of the deep differences between Slavic and Balticand they extend far beyond grammar and lexis into folk customs and belief systemsprobably stem from these earlier, nameless traditions, which may have developed in their respective locations for centuries before the coming of the pre-Slavs and preBalts. This is suggested by the substantive differences in vocabulary between these two forms of Indo-European, as well as by the notable differences in word formation that can be observed in their cognate lexicon. The idea of a succession of settlement waves that preceded the SlavicBaltic colonization of Eastern Europe is supported by the stratification of Indo-European ingredients in Finnic. The picture of the formation of Slavic and Baltic that emerges from these considerations has implications for our understanding of the Indo-European migrations in general as well as more narrowly for the Balto-Slavic question. 4.
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In most of the twentieth century the dominant idea regarding the IndoEuropean settlement of Europe was that of a single dispersal followed by dialectal differentiation. This accords roughly with the archaeological record, which shows a steady westward flow of corded-ware people settling the area between the Middle Dniepr and the Upper Dniester ca. 28002600 B.C., reaching the Rhine 25002000, settling Jutland, Southern Scandinavia, Finland, and the Baltic region from about 2000, and, in the east, spreading up the Dnieper to the Upper and Middle Volga between 2000 and 1700 (Sedov 1993:3839). In recent decades this conception has yielded to that of a staggered emigration of Indo-European groups out of the core territory (thus Polome 1990:274; Gamkrelidze & Ivanov 1984; more references in Drinka, this volume), which explains significant differences in grammatical structure between the dialects of earlier and later emigrant groups. The Indo-European strata in Finnic and those that underlie Slavic and Baltic suggest a different, complementary picture, of successions of small groups of people seeking a better life in the woodlands. From the strata they left in Finnic, which include many apparent intrusions, we can infer that their settlements time and again proved too small to be linguistically viable. Where newcomers settled among Indo-European speakers, as in the case of the preSlavs and pre-Balts, presumably their tradition of speaking had better chances of being passed on, but so, surely, did many elements of the local dialects, which were kindred and already adapted to local conditions. This way of conceptualizing the Indo-European colonization of the East European forest zoneas a process encompassing multiple ad-migrationsmay be relevant to an understanding of other parts of North-West Indo-European as well. If this picture corresponds to reality, Slavic and Baltic started on different paths of development at least from the time pre-Slavic and pre-Baltic speakers began to settle in their respective areas, among Indo-European speakers with different traditions of speaking. It seems likely that pre-Slavs and pre-Balts at first spoke rather similar dialects, though one may doubt they were originally one language (thus Beekes 1995:22). In any case, there are no grounds for thinking of our inventory of reconstructed Proto-Balto-Slavic forms as parts of a real prehistoric community language, for we will never know precisely what, or how much, of their possibly shared lexicon and grammar each group of settlers gave up within a few generations in favor of local ingredients, as they merged their ways of speakingand their other practices and systems of valueswith those of the different local populations.
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Slavic and The Indo-European Migrations

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Slavic and the Indo-European Migrations. Language Contacts in Prehistory.

SLAVIC AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN MIGRATIONS

SLAVIC AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN MIGRATIONS

SLAVIC AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN MIGRATIONS

HENNING ANDERSEN No. of lexemes 8 18 7 18 17

1000 B.C. 2000 B.C.

SLAVIC AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN MIGRATIONS

SLAVIC AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN MIGRATIONS

SLAVIC AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN MIGRATIONS

Table 4: Reflexes of PIE s and k in Slavic and Baltic

SLAVIC AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN MIGRATIONS

SLAVIC AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN MIGRATIONS

SLAVIC AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN MIGRATIONS

SLAVIC AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN MIGRATIONS

SLAVIC AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN MIGRATIONS

SLAVIC AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN MIGRATIONS

SLAVIC AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN MIGRATIONS

SLAVIC AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN MIGRATIONS

SLAVIC AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN MIGRATIONS

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