Talk:Balto-Slavic languages

Good literature in English

Just found this book partially available on-line on Google Books:

Foreword to the Past: A Cultural History of the Baltic People By Endre Bojtár Published by Central European University Press, 1999 ISBN 9639116424, 9789639116429 419 pages

The reason I was looking for a reference was my initial suspicion that the Wiki pages on the Baltic and Slavic languages and cultural history are very much confusing because of the Slavic POV on one hand, and the lack of good summaries in English on the other. After having read the chapters about the research on the Proto-Baltic-Slavic in that excellent book, I just can confirm, unfortunately, that the Balto-Slavic language page is a collection of selected/preferred topics, nationalistic views, hasty conclusions (such as the recent methodological tests of computational analysis in the IE language genetics), amateurish experiments rather than a broad perspective of a difficult and constantly developing research field. It is ridiculous that the same editors who’ve been constructing the Balto-Slavic language article took their freedom to come up even with a separate article about Balto-Slavic peoples, a topic, which is close to science fiction (there has been found no archaeological culture that could be identified as a trace left by those language speakers, and the population genetics data shows a clear difference in the genetic substrate of the existing Slavic and Baltic peoples). Also, in the main IE language article, the same author(s) are dominant, and no surprise that there have been overlooked some “small” peculiarities that the modern Lithuanian with its dialects is one of the last reflections of the old IE, that the Baltic and Slavic are also close to Germanic, that Germanic made a strong influence on Western Baltic. Finally, in the comparative linguistics table as a representative of the “Baltoslavic” is given, of course, Russian, although, as far as I understand, the most innovative product of that branch.

I want to make my point clear- the articles about IE, Slavic, Baltic and- perhaps- Germanic languages and peoples need to be examined by experts like the author of the above-mentioned book. Other vice, they’ll remain childish playground for self-interested, or specific POV promoting individuals. 22:39, 26 December 2008 (UTC)Gotho-Baltic Gotho-Baltic 18:00, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Pjetro Dini's seminal (but alas in Italian) work on the Baltic languages postulates a proto-Baltic language from which (traditionally) Eastern and Western Baltic originated, but also adding Pomeranian Baltic and Dnieper Baltic. The commonality espoused in the current article is, I would agree, rather overstated. There are a lot more theories that have been postulated on the relationship of Baltic and Slavic than is postulated here, that is, that there is definitely a common proto-Balto-Slavic language. PetersV       TALK 05:45, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

The more sources I check, the more obvious it is that this article represents a certain POV. See for example E. Britannica:

"hypothetical language group comprising the languages of the Baltic and Slavic subgroups of the Indo-European language family. Those scholars who accept the Balto-Slavic hypothesis attribute the large number of close similarities in the vocabulary, grammar, and sound systems of the Baltic and Slavic languages to development from a common ancestral language after the breakup of Proto-Indo-European. Those scholars who reject the hypothesis believe that the similarities are the result of parallel development and of mutual influence during a long period of contact."

The same says also in the German Wiki article on that issue. Namely, it seems to be just a hypothesis. This should be stated clearly in the English Wiki article too. 14:09, 28 December 2008 (UTC)Gotho-Baltic Gotho-Baltic 18:00, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

All proto-languages are hypothetical. The hypothesis that the Baltic and Slavic languages descended from a common ancestor called (for convenience) Proto-Balto-Slavic is no less sturdy than the hypothesis that the Indic and Iranian languages descended from a common ancestor called (for convenience) Proto-Indo-Iranian, or (for that matter) than the hypothesis that Latvian, Lithuanian, and Old Prussian descended from a common ancestor called (for convenience) Proto-Baltic. —Angr 14:29, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Apparently not:

"Proto-Baltic, the ancestral Baltic language from which the various known languages evolved, developed from the dialects of the northern area of Proto-Indo-European. These dialects also included the Slavic and Germanic protolanguages (and possibly also Tocharian). The quite close historic relationship of the Baltic, Slavic, and Germanic languages is shown by the fact that they alone of all the Indo-European languages have the sound m in the dative plural ending (e.g., Lithuanian vilká-m-s “wolf,” Common Slavic *vilko-m-u, Gothic wulf-am).[...] All this shows that the Proto-Slavic area of that time (south of the Pripyat River) was much smaller than the Proto-Baltic area. Proto-Slavic began to develop as a separate linguistic entity in the 2nd millennium BC and was to remain quite unified for a long time to come. Proto-Baltic, however, besides developing into an independent linguistic unit in the 2nd millennium BC, also began gradually to split. Among other things, the size of the Proto-Baltic area had an influence on the development of Proto-Baltic in that it considerably reduced contact between its dialects" (From Encyclopaedia Britannica, Baltic languages). I guess this was written by professionals wasn't it? Also, check out what Endre Bojtár notes in his book, p 71: "Judging Baltic-Slavic unity was far from scholarly at all times". Once again, this article is a good (bad) example of it. 15:27, 28 December 2008 (UTC) Gotho-Baltic Gotho-Baltic 18:00, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Balto-Slavic is a somewhat less "sturdy" hypothesis than Indo-Iranian, as is made perfectly clear in the article. It is still clearly the mainstream view. --dab (𒁳) 20:40, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, E Britannica is hardly a specialist source, if we are going to discuss the finer points of proto-Balto-Slavic theory. Hxseek (talk) 11:05, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll be totally uninformed for a moment... in terms of similarities to ancient or current languages, in my own descriptions of Latvian I liken it most to Latin (female suffix -a, masculine -is, similar declension, etc.) with Slavic-like soft consonants. My question of curiosity is, did palatization of consonants come before or after Latin? That is, is palatization a part of "proto-Indo-European" that western European languages have (largely) lost, or is palatization a feature which the Baltic and Slavic languages "acquired" whether by relationship or independently? The answer, if there is a consistent one in scholarship, might help frame some of the narrative. The current article gives a bit WP:UNDUE to Soviet scholarship and feels a bit more like an inventory of the synthesized Proto-Balto-Slavic than a story. Just some thoughts/observations. PetersV       TALK 21:28, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I think you are referring to the Centum-Satem isogloss. If so, this very much predates Latin. --dab (𒁳) 16:23, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

There is an English review of Pietro Dini's "Le lingue baltiche" in Lituanus: http://www.lituanus.org/1998/98_4_06.htm And it's written not by a Lithuanian.Gotho-Baltic 22:12, 30 December 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gotho-Baltic (talk • contribs)

According to that review, it has a chapter dealing with the Balto-Slavic problem, and an excerpt it gives demonstrates thatf author's knowledge of the subject is not particularly well. Slavic first palatalization has absolutely nothing to do with Baltic palatalization (read the article—some Baltic toponyms on the area that was subsequently Slavicised exhibit it) and Proto-Slavic *minuti (the source of Cr. mínuti, Cz. minout, Russ. minút') is PIE *mey- (and thus akin to e.g. Latin meō), and completely unrelated to various derivations and ablaut grades of PIE root *men-. As is stated in this very article, the problem of the distribution of the prothetic vowels in the reflexes of PIE syllabic sonorants in Balto-Slavic is still "unsolved", despite some well-proposed algorithms, though the generally they're the same in Baltic and Slavic if they match in PIE origin and meaninig (thus the generally same vocalic extension in pseudo-random distribution: even more of an argument for it forming a genetic clade IMHO, as otherwise in the case of some "areal feature" you wouldn't expect such regularity).

You say: The current article gives a bit WP:UNDUE to Soviet scholarship and feels a bit more like an inventory of the synthesized Proto-Balto-Slavic than a story - nonsense, Balto-Slavic theory is not related to some "Soviet scolarship", and is supported by linguists from all over the world (American, Austrian, Danish, Croatian - of those referenced/mentioned in this article). It seems to me that you seek to advocate some alleged "POV" where the content of this article merely reflects the status modern scholarship on the issue, just because it is not in harmony with your Baltic supremacy theories. Lituanus is crackpot magazine written by amateurs that seek to promote some "Baltic commonness" propaganda. This article for a very long time had a section that was copied from an article in Lituanus that gave "arguments" such as "Slavic law of open syllables did not operate in Baltic" that should somehow "invalidate" the Balto-Slavic theory. Since the tendency described as the "law of open syllables" operated in the 7th-9th century AD (well after the Balto-Slavic split), it's as argument as to say to that High German consonant shift did not operate in Anglo-Saxon, Gothic and Old Norse is an "argument" for them not beeing all Germanic. Completely brain-damaged. It even got copied to some other FL wikipedias from here.

Your cite of Mažiulis' article on Britannica: "Proto-Slavic began to develop as a separate linguistic entity in the 2nd millennium BC" - Indeed it has (sometimes between 1500-1000 BCE, as the the article currently does state in one of the footnotes), but during the timeframe before that period, between the late PIE (~ 4000 BCE) and the split of BSl. dialect continuum, Baltic and Slavic underwent a period of common development and that period is what Proto-Balto-Slavic period is all about. Some of those common innovations are also shared with Germanic, but whole bulk of them are not shared with *any* other IE group, i.e. they represent exclusive common innovation, and such exclusive isoglosses are present in phonology, morphology, accentology & lexis, examples all of which are given in the article. For all practical and theoretical purposes, such stage must be called Proto-Balto-Slavic.

As for the post-Balto-Slavic development of some Proto-Baltic — well that's, as far as I've read, a major problem due to immense discepancies between Western and Eastern Baltic (two of which, individually, may indeed be genetic groupings, but entire Baltic group is apparently not, being just a "leftover").

The term 'Proto-Baltic' is in Ivanov-Toporov model synonymous with 'Proto-Baltic', and they both represent identical timeframe in the development from PIE. You can use Proto-Baltic as a term of convenience when e.g. discussing only Baltic languages, or when discussing etymons of PIE origin that have not been retained in Slavic. It does not invalidate Balto-Slavic, inasmuch as it does not support Proto-Baltic. The terminological sequence "Old Baltic > Slavic" your book lists is POV and unacceptable, as it insinuates that somehow Slavic "evolved" from Baltic. It is also very confusing to see the speakers of such pre-Baltic-Slavic to be called "Balts" or "Slavs", as Baltic and Slavic ethnicity did no exsist at the time.

I see on a p. 75 of the g.b.c. book you mention above that "it is certain tht following these a Proto-(Common) Baltic branch existed. It is estimated to circa 2000-400 BC)" - so it's obvious that this guy apparenly talks of Proto-Baltic in a perid that postdates Proto-Balto-Slavic. Exclusive isoglosses shared by Balto-Slavic with Germanic are several, but they are not that important or abundant anyway. You cannot possibly compare them with stuff such as mobile accent paradigms, an extremely delicate set of alternations of accents in both register (acute, circumflex) and position (root, first/last syllable of the ending) throughout inflectional paradigms (both verbal and nominal) which is found nowhere beside Balto-Slavic, and is ridiculous to explain it as some kind of "areal feature" or "parallel development". 100 years ago these were used by some as an argument against the Balto-Slavic as genetic grouping, today they're one of the main arguments (see Olander's thesis in PDF at the end of an article for detailed account).

Most modern IEists as well as specialists in both Baltic and Slavic languages not only do not doubt the BSl. theory, but readily reconstructs Balto-Slavic proto-language (though in two not-so-compatible frameworks) that is more or less described in this article. See Rick Derksen's Slavic and Baltic inherited lexicon on IEED project pages (www.ieed.nl) if you don't believe. Note the absence of "Proto-Baltic". --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 18:15, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Is this the way an editor should deal with references? Ivan Stambuk says: “…and an excerpt it gives demonstrates thatf author's knowledge of the subject is not particularly well”; and ” The terminological sequence "Old Baltic > Slavic" your book lists is POV and unacceptable, as it insinuates that somehow Slavic "evolved" from Baltic”. The guy whose knowledge, according to I.S., “is not particularly well” has written a number of books and articles: http://www.pudini.eu/. Regarding the “unacceptable” sequence, it seems that this is exactly what Ivanov-Toporovs model is about. At least in Bojtar’s book and also in the Lithuanian article here in Wikipedia about the Baltic ls it clearly says that in I.-T.’s theory the Slavic is a spin-off from proto-Baltic. I also quoted Britannica on that issue. And once again, Novotna and Blazek: ” 15/14th cent. BC – crystalization of the proto-Slavs in the southern periphery of the proto-Baltic continuum, localized from Silesia to Central Ukraine (Trziniec-Komarov culture).” It’s a clear statement in a scientific publication, and I don think the editor is supposed to give interpretations in what context it is given, what theory is acceptable or unacceptable. Especially, if he admits he’s not a linguist.Gotho-Baltic 10:09, 4 January 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gotho-Baltic (talk • contribs)

Ivan Stambuk certainly knows what he is writing. Let's not start charging accusations of pan-Slavic propaganda against their powerless Baltic cousins. (Its OK, the USSR is gone). The article states that the issue has debates, as all language theories do. Hxseek (talk) 11:12, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Dude, I'm not pan-Slavic propagandist (in fact I hate it as much as I hate every other pan-*, the whole idea of "one language, one people" being a result of someone's sick imagination). You yourself cited sources several times very selectively, without interpreting them (i.e. not understanding what that mean), which is esp. illustrative in Novotná & Blažek (2007) paper this vry article cites wherefrom you quote a sentence "15/14th cent. BC – crystalization of the proto-Slavs in the southern periphery of the proto-Baltic continuum, localized from Silesia to Central Ukraine (Trziniec-Komarov culture).”, and 1 sentence further the paper says: ""These results represent unambiguous evidence for Balto-Slavic unity.". Sapienti sat.

Again, I repeat: it's pointless to speak of "Balts" or "Slavs" in the period before the Balto-Slavic split (Late PIE c. 4000 BCE - 1500-1000 BCE). The ethnocultural traits that define Slavs and Balts are all results of later development (few paganic deities here and there aside), as opposed to e.g. Indo-Iranian branch where Old Indic (Vedic Sanskrit) and Old Iranian (Avestan) documents speak of very long stage of shared common social and religious development. That paper you quote just uses the term Baltic in 1500 BCE synonymously with Balto-Slavic, as Ivanov&Toporov have originally suggested. It would be insane POV to call Proto-Balto-Slavic "Old Balic". Linguistic evidence shows that there is no significant difference between the Proto-Baltic one can reconstruct on the basis of comparative Baltic evidence, and Proto-Balto-Slavic one can reconstruct on the basis of comparative Slavic and Baltic evidence - they refer to the same chronological sage. In fact, hundreds of Proto-Slavic words can be derived from Baltic by application of regular sound laws. I can imagine that "Slavs descending from Balts" fits into some crazy nationalist scheme of yours, but that is far from truth, esp. because most of the modern-they Slavic speakers have very little with the Proto-Slavic speakers of the 6th century (pre-expansion), but that's another problem to deal with. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 13:11, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I think you misinterpreted what I wrote. I stated that some of the (apparently Baltic) editors were implying that the proto-Balto-Slavic linguistic theorem is a Soviet era, pan-Slavist propaganda. I'm saying its not, but based on some good, objective evidence. ? or was that directed at Gotho-Baltic ? Hxseek (talk) 04:37, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

It was directed to him. I should've properly indented the comment.. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 06:43, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Summary. As can be judged from available references, Baltic-Slavic is just a hypothetical IE language group, and the existence of proto-Balto-Slavic is a subject of ongoing debate. This should be explicitly stated in this article, and the decisive statements like “… prevalent scholary opinion is that there is very little doubt that Baltic and Slavic languages experienced a period of common development” should be toned down. Here I list my references once again:

1. Maziulis article “Baltic languages” in E. Britannica.
2. Pietro Dini's "Le lingue baltiche", a review available in Lituanus: http://www.lituanus.org/1998/98_4_06.htm
3. Foreword to the Past: A Cultural History of the Baltic People By Endre Bojtár. Central European University Press, 1999. Chapter 2, p 70-77. Accessible via Google Books.

If this is not enough, here is one more:

4. Reconstructing Prehistorical Dialects: Initial Vowels in Slavic and Baltic‎, by Henning Andersen. Mouton de Gruyter, 1996. See for example p.187- 190. Accessible via Google Books. Just one citation:

p.188; “..there is evidence internal to the inherited lexicon of the Slavic and Baltic languages which speaks against this previously hypothesized, more or less distant, unified language stage”.

This WP article and Baltic and Slavic-related parts of the Indo-European languages article should be cleaned to reach NPOV[1]. Other vice, they deserve to be warned of original research[2].Gotho-Baltic 11:16, 21 March 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gotho-Baltic (talk • contribs)

"Baltic-Slavic is just a hypothetical IE language group". Sure, but so is Baltic by itself, so is Slavic by itself, so is Germanic, so is Celtic, etc. The fact that it's hypothetical doesn't mean it doesn't enjoy a broad scholarly consensus, which it does. "The existence of proto-Balto-Slavic is a subject of ongoing debate". Well, not among experts in Indo-European linguistics, it isn't. There are very few reputable Indo-Europeanists who still question the existence of Proto-Balto-Slavic. Opposition to the Balto-Slavic hypothesis comes almost entirely from Latvians and Lithuanians who have a vested political interest in denying it, but their arguments simply don't stand up against the weight of the evidence. —Angr 14:43, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Anderson's book is OR, dealing with one particular sound change (word-initial vowels in Balto-Slavic), mostly fringy rubbish. I see no arguments in his book supporting the claim of "evidence" suggesting Balto-Slavic not passing thru a common stage. The rest of your listings are equally worthless. Mažiulis himself accepts Ivanov-Toporov model of BSl. languages relationship. Take a look at his article in the latest issue of Baltistica [3] (the most renowned journal for Baltic philology) PDF balt.-sl. *ungnis, balt.-sl. *śimtan etc. Whoops. Mažiulis postulates Balto-Slavic reconstructions, what more evidence do you need? Really, take a look at those PDFs in Baltistica issues of 2008, you can find articles written by linguists of various nationality, all endorsing Balto-Slavic as genetic clade, and dealing with Proto-Balto-Slavic reconstructions. E.g. renowned American Indo-Europeanists and Harvard professor Jay Jasanoff [4] (The accentual type *vèdō, *vedetı̍ and the origin of mobility in the Balto-Slavic verb), German linguist Gert Klingenschmitt's article [5] with Balto-Slavic reconstructions (search the PDF for urbaltoslav.), not to mention second and first volume articles (W. R. Schmalstieg, A note on the *-ā stem nominative, dative, accusative and instrumental singular cases in Balto-Slavic, S. Young, Winter's law and etymologies, with special reference to Lithuanian, F. Kortlandt, Balto-Slavic phonological developments etc.). If you think that there is some significant minority of linguists endorsing some "Proto-Baltic", and working their theories out in journals comparable in significance to Baltistica, feel free to state them and we'll insert their names in the article. Opinions of "ongoing debate" in some third-party sources are worthless, especially if they are not written by specialists (i.e. linguists, dealing with Baltic historical phonology from Proto-Indo-European perspective). I understand your Baltic supremacism zeal resulting from the frustrations of extensive Russification in Soviet times, but c'mon, you're starting to sound really crazy. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:03, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Arbitrary break in proto-? discussion

(od) Thanks for the new sources. I just wanted to mention regarding my comment earlier, "The current article gives a bit WP:UNDUE to Soviet scholarship and feels a bit more like an inventory of the synthesized Proto-Balto-Slavic than a story." When I made that observation it was based on the impression the article made in terms of sources and narrative. When it comes to linguistics, I personally have no nationalistic agenda seeking to promote proto-Baltic (intended to bypass proto-Balto-Slavic, denying common ancestry, etc.).
   It might be worthwhile to include a tail section somewhere on "==Proponents of proto-Baltic==" (as an alternative to proto-Balto-Slavic) so specific claims can be outlined and laid to rest. To the various points made above, I think we can agree that a simple redirect of proto-Baltic to the article here is not sufficient and leaves the article open to interpretations of pan-Slavism. PetersV       TALK 16:53, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

There is no such things as "Proto-Baltic" that can be reconstructable by comparative method. Most Balto-Slavists agree on that. For example, the Rick Derksen of IEED project that writes etymological dictionaries for Slavic and Baltic languages (in a combined effort of several scholars to write new comprehensive Indo-European etymological dictionary that will replace Pokorny's) explicitly states in the foreword of his Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon that he doesn't believe that Proto-Baltic ever existed. However, he does reconstruct Proto-Balto-Slavic forms on the basis of combined Baltic and Slavic evidence. His Baltic Inherited Lexicon will be published later this year, in the same form.

The term Proto-Baltic is used by some as a term of convenience for forms attested in Baltic languages and derived from PIE that do not have corresponding Slavic forms. Those forms however exhibit sound changes that are exclusive Balto-Slavic, and hence cannot be an argument for some "Proto-Balto". There is very little doubt that Proto-Balto-Slavic stage existed. There is very much doubt that post-Balto-Slavic Proto-Baltic existed tho (e.g. the previous "version" of this article had some arguments by that Klimas dude listing some alleged Common Baltic isoglosses, all of which are in fact shared retentions (i.e. archaisms), not exclusive common innovations). Note that also that such Proto-Baltic does not actually invalidate the existence of Proto-Balto-Slavic.

First present some real evidence of Proto-Baltic (in renowned scholarly publications, such as Baltistica, with linguists specialising in Baltic historical phonology, not some general uncorroborated statements in some secondary works) being advocated, and then we'll put a section on it. Otherwise it'll be violation of WP:UNDUE, as most specialists takes Balto-Slavic branch for granted.

And also please cut this "pan-slavism" thing, as this as absolutely nothing to do with it. Lots of major researchers in the field are in fact not Slavs at all. Take a look e.g. at the list of participants on IWoBA V [6] and see where they come from. Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Denmark..Even some Baltists (e.g. Mažiulis, the author of the Britannica article you quote) reconstruct Proto-Balto-Slavic forms in their papers, like I've listed above. This is not some world-wide "conspiracy". Proto-Baltic never existed, and neither did "Proto-Balts". "Balts" where since ever a bunch of unconnected paganic tribes that never exhibited a period of common cultural or linguistic development. I can imagine that this can be disappointing to some, but that's the truth, sorry. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:01, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

It is not necessary to call Lituanus a crackpot magazine. A Balto-Slavic protolanguage is untenable. The assessment that there was no singular "Proto" Baltic dialect appears to debunk a Balto-Slavic protolanguage. The Γαλίνδαι and Σουδινοί of the Greek geographer Ptolemy in the 2nd Century A.D. resurface again in the historical record one millennium later, as Galindians and Sūdovians, inhabiting the same geographic location during the European Papal Christian Crusades against Baltic peoples. The "unconnected paganic tribes", with their allies, defeated the Papal Crusaders of Western Europe in 1410 and established Freedom of Religion in the Duchy of Lithuania. The archaeological record has hemp and wheat seeds in the Lithuanian area around 3,100 BCE and agriculture record intensifying in the centuries following. The genetic legacy of early contacts of that period is reflected in the allele DYS19*15 in relation to N1c [old name N3] in Baltic population. Is Slavic at Pre-Komarov ethnic or multi-ethnic as perhaps Chernoles culture? A Balto-Slavic area-language would be defacto multi-ethnic, more so than an earlier Pre-Baltic/PreThracian. -- We could split hairs here until we're bald. Of course Baltic & Slavic are related - they're I.E. As the West-Baltic greeting " Kailas " connotates - We are all One Sudowite (talk) 04:20, 23 April 2009

I have to say I disagree with "Balts" where [sic.] since ever a bunch of unconnected paganic tribes that never exhibited a period of common cultural or linguistic development. From identical or nearly identical root words to a remarkable similarity yet richness of handicrafts including folk patterns in textiles and elsewhere (across Latvian and Lithuanian), Ivan's statement swings the pendulum too far the other way. That's not a "nationalist" defensive position, that's simply looking at the span of cultural artifacts.

   As we've disussed here, the latest linguistic timelines put proto-Slavic breaking off from the common root with the "trunk" continuing to modern Baltic. That it's now quite likely no specific proto-Baltic existed in apposition to and separate from proto-Slavic is really quite immaterial--the phrase "red herring" comes to mind--the common root for the Baltic tongues and cultures is there however you look at it. PetersV       TALK 17:09, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

P.S. The short answer is that according to the latest scholarship timelines we've discussed here, proto-Balto-Slavic IS proto-Baltic (is proto-Balto-Slavic), predating proto-Slavic. PetersV       TALK 17:16, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

About "Where are the Slavs at 3,000 BCE? A Balto-Slavic protolanguage is untenable." My understanding of ancient history and the inhabitation of Baltic territories is:

• Finno-Ugric peoples
• displaced later by Baltic peoples

... which points to commonalities by association

With respect to European Russia:

• Baltic peoples
• displaced later by Slavic peoples (Volga, for example, having been represented in scholarship as a Baltic word)

... which doesn't sound any different from the first case, not implying any commonality other than through adoption by cross-pollenation. However, I think we're getting stuck on terminology and what it has meant in the past versus what it means now in terms of the latest scholarship, that is:

1. Balto-Slavic represented as root language from which Baltic languages later branched off (the scholarship of my youth, so, encyclopedias from the 1960's)
2. Balto-Slavic represented as a root language from which Baltic and Slavic split (that is, as two symmetric branches from a trunk, not that I have seen this model, but another logical representation putting the branches on an equal footing)
3. Balto-Slavic represented as a root language which continued on to the Baltic languages from which Slavic branched off (that is, latest thoughts on the topic)

At 3,000 BCE the Fino-Ugric tribes were to the west of the Baltic tribes, the Slavic tribes were to the east of the Baltic tribes. That doesn't make the latest scholarship on the root of the Baltic and Slavic languages invalid in postulating a common ancestor. Admittedly I am not a linguist; that said, logically, I don't see an impediment to adopting current scholarship as valid and representing that the notion of what Balto-Slavic has evolved over time--and that the "Balto-Slavic" postulated half a century ago is not the same as that of today. Thoughts, Sudowite? PetersV       TALK 17:19, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Here is some info that gives an idea about the current situation in the Baltic-Slavic research field:

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New perspectives on Baltic, Slavic and Balto-Slavic Workshop to be held within the XIXth International Conference on Historical Linguistics in Nijmegen, 10-15 August 2009 Conveners: Imke Mendoza (Salzburg), Eugen Hill (München). E-mail: eugen.hill (at) lrz.uni-muenchen.de

Key-note speakers: Henning Andersen (UCLA), Johannes Reinhart (Universität Wien)

The diachronic relationship between the Baltic and the Slavic languages is one of the most intriguing puzzles of Indo-European linguistics. Although these groups of languages constitute two separate branches of Indo-European, they share an unusually high number of common innovations concerning the inflectional, derivational and accentual system. Despite many years of research, the reason for the striking similarity remains unclear. There are two competing, although not mutually exclusive hypotheses. One assumes an intermediate Balto-Slavic stage after the break up of Proto-Indo-European. The other hypothesis seeks to explain the similarities within the framework of language contact, i.e as a result of their longstanding geographic relationship. Both positions have been argued, but neither has been generally accepted. During the last few decades, international research has concentrated on particular grammatical features of Baltic and Slavic. Most of these studies while useful, however, focused on either Baltic or Slavic without taking into account the other language group. The goal of the workshop therefore is to bring together scholars with expertise in Baltic and in Slavic and to find some new answers to the old question about the existence of a Balto-Slavic unity. http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/curric/colloq2.htm

---

It's obvious that the Balto-Slavic article is written in a completely different tone, i.e. it gives a clear preference for the Balto-Slavic hypothesis, which is nothing else but POV. Also, the recently added map of the dialect continuum during the Bronze Age is misleading, as it is in complete disagreement with the established distribution of the Baltic cultures. See Gimbutas, http://www.vaidilute.com/books/gimbutas/gimbutas-03.html, Fig 10. I suggest the author to modify it accordingly. Gotho-Baltic 12:25, 21 August 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gotho-Baltic (talk • contribs)

The theory on genetic grouping is by far the most widespread one in modern scholarly circles. The only ones not accepting it are some Baltic nationalist extremist who feel "insulted" bybeing linguistically grouped with their "archenemies" Russians. Even you seem to be that kind of person - apparently claiming that Slavic "descended" from Baltic in your last edit to the article. Please keep your Baltic supremacism out of this article. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 18:31, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

To PeterV - Kailas! The Trzciniec (early " West Baltic ") culture was related to the Komarov ( "Pre-Slavic") culture, but different, as ceramics, metalwork, hydronyms, and burial rites indicate. The Komarov complex bordered the Trzciniec and Sosnitsa (early W. and E. Baltic) complexes to it's North, but appears culturally related to the Montreoru (early Dacian) complex to it's South in regard to burial rites and pottery. The cultural material may support a theoretical " Daco-Slavic " proto language nicely. A theoretical " Daco-Slavic " proto-language may prove itself even better than some weaker " Balto-Slavic " Slavic did not descend from Baltic, only bordered it. --Sudovite (talk) 18:17, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Slavic languages did not descend from Baltic; they descended from Proto-Balto-Slavic, just as Baltic languages. It does not mean that modern-day Slavs genetically descended from the speakers of Balto-Slavic or Baltic. It does not mean that modern-day Balts descended from the speakers of Balto-Slavic or Slavic. You need to overcome the obsolete 19th century concept of language=people. Language spread, shrink and relocate thru the ages. You shouldn't be "ashamed" that Lithuanian is much more closer to Russian or Serbo-Croatian, than it is to Sanskrit or Latin. No archeological discovery will ever change that already-established relationship. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:31, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Silly me, I keep thinking "people" speak "language". Who knew! Sudowite (talk) 23:18, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Galū/galvā

• PBSl. *galwā́ 'head' > Lith. galvà, Old Pr. galwo, Latv. galva; PSl. *galwā́ > Common Slavic *golvà (OCS glava, Russ. golová, Pol. głowa)

PBSl. form of 'head' was not *galwā́ as the article states, but *galū in Nom.Sg, *galūs in Nom.Pl., having Gen.Sg. *galuvās, Dat.Sg. *galuvai etc., from which the Nom.Sg. form *galuvā and later *galvā was generalized. The given Old Prussian form galwo is incorrect! The Prussian Enchiridion (1561): «Begi stas vīrs ast steisei genas galū, ainavīdai kai Christus stā galū ast steison perōniskan», so the Old Prussian Nom.Sg. is galū, while Gen.Sg. is galvas, like in Latvian. The Prussian Enchiridion (1561): «kaigi stas galvasdelīks en Sacramenten». The Russian golova < *goluvā < *galuvā. OCS glāva < *galāva < *galavā < *galuvā. So the mentioned Common Slavic form **golvà never existed! The word *galū is also attested in Biblical name Golgotha /Golgatha which is remake from Old Persian Galū gātha 'The way of skulls' = Latin Calvary, where calva 'skullcap' < *galva. Also the first Greek letter alpha, Hebrew alef is nothing else than remake of *galvā, as the letter looks like bull's head. So the change *galū > *galvā is very old. The Old Persian & Old Prussian retained the oldest Nom.Sg. form galū, while other mentioned IDE languages changed it to *gal(u)vā. Mutatis mutandis to all other Russian -olo- and -oro- < -lū and -rū in Nom.Sg. Roberts7 01:14, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Old Prussian galwo is attested in the Elbing Vocabulary (entry #68), the alternative form gallū in the Catechisms you quote. Comparing to the other Baltic and Slavic evidence, it is doubtless that the latter form is secondary, the original PBSl. form being ā-stem *galwā́ (or *golwā if you don't assume that PIE */o/ > Baltic/Slavic */a/ was PBSl., but independent in Baltic and Slavic, as some do).

Russian golova is by pleophony from Common Slavic *golva, and OCS glava is by liquid metathesis from the same etymon. Both of these changes were rather late Common Slavic developments (some would rather say that it was only one change with 2 outputs) and are attested in hundreds of instances (borrowing from and to Slavic, before and after the change). Read the article on them, it mentions some instances of changes in onomastics evidence.

As for the alef, Golgotha, cavalry etc. - no comment. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 13:40, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Ivanov and Toporov, 1961

Now, what did they say about Baltic and Slavic? Look up Andersen, H. Slavic and the Indo-European migrations. In “Language contacts in prehistory: studies in stratigraphy”, 2003, p.50 (via Google Books). I think you better get busy with your "Modern interpretation" section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gotho-Baltic (talk • contribs) 23:15, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

The whole chapter dedicated to those Ivanov-Toporov is ridiculous from any point. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.242.102.250 (talk) 12:02, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Splitoff?

Someone templated the section Proto-Balto-Slavic language to be splitoff from the article? The answer should be: of course, go ahead! The reasons are:

1. an edit of the article says that it is 58 kilobytes long, a splitoff is very due,
2. having separate articles for the language families and their hypothetical proto-language is the general pattern applied to f.ex. Proto-Indo-European language and Indo-European languages, why should Balto-Slavic be different?

... said: Rursus (^mbork³) 16:39, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I support this proposal, but something on PBSl. language should also be left in this article for illustration. I suggest that that be the list of basic isoglosses and a few sentences on shared accentual laws. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:24, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and split off Proto-Balto-Slavic language. Both the new article and the now-empty section in this article will need some love to further spruce them up as separate entities. —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 09:17, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Novgorod AD 600

The article now contains this claim: ...around AD 600, uniform Proto-Slavic with no detectable dialectal differentiation was spoken from Thessaloniki in Greece to Novgorod in Russia... -- which, as far as the language spoken in the area of the then non-existent city of Novgorod of a then non-existent country which has only later become known as Russia, seems, diplomatically speaking, dubious.3 Löwi (talk) 10:27, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

You miss the point: whether the city of Novgorod existed there at that time is irrelevant, and the statement is used only to show that the entire area in between was completely Proto-Slavicised. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 10:46, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Indications are that on and after AD 600 Finnic languages were spoken in the "Novgorod area". The statement about the area being by then completely Proto-Slavicised refers to an uncommon hypothesis with little evidence to support or substantiate it. Cheers, 3 Löwi (talk) 13:43, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Uhm, what indications are you speaking of? There were no "Finnic speakers" there left by that time. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 18:04, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

There's plenty of circumstantial evidence about Finnic languages being spoken during the first millennium West, North, East, as well as South-East of (later) Novgorod. However, a good piece of material evidence to the very point is Birch bark letter no. 292. How do you say "Cheers!" in Serbo-Croatian? 3 Löwi (talk) 08:52, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

LOL, I thought Old Novgorodian bb letters were all Slavic! I'm sure that there were pockets of Uralic-speaking population there at the time. In Croatia Romance dialects (so-called "Dalmatian") were spoken along with the Slavic all the way till the 16th century! The point in disputed claim is, however, to emphasize 1) that the Slavic language of the period, to the extent we can reconstruct it on the basis of comparative evidence and scarce glosses and toponyms, was dialectally undiversified 2) it was spoken on immense territory it had not previously covered, expanding in a very brief period, i.e. so fast that all discernible dialectal differences between East/West/South Slavic area that we know today came rather late (9th century). I wasn't meant to say that it was "Slavic land" till the dawn of time, or that there wasn't indigenous populations on that area that escaped Slavicization. The only thought that was intended to be conveyed was on the areal coverage of Slavic spread. If you think it needs rephrasing, please be bold and so!

In SC wee say Pozdrav! Bok! or Ćao! for "Cheers" xD --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 10:37, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

The territory of the Novgorod region was inhabited by Slavs, which confirms both archeology (Pskov long burial mounds, Novgorod mounds) and linguistics in the form of numerous Slavic archaic placenames, both indigenous Slavic and pre-Slavic, subjected to Proto-Slavic processing, moreover, with the Finnish layer of placenames is exceptionally ancient. There is no Finno-Ugric microtoponymy, as in other once Finnish regions that were settled by the Slavs later (for example, Eastern Karelia, Arkhangelsk region) The language (Karelian / Vepsian) of letter 292 is not from the indigenous Novgorod territory, but from the outskirts that were under the control of Novgorod, where Karelians and Vepsians still live.

Serbo-Croatian controversy

I have split off the very lengthy discussion about the term "Serbo-Crotian" to a separate subpage so as to not clog this page with very large charts and tables. Please continue the discussion there. (This action should not be construed as my involvement in the actual discussion or as support for any given side of the argument.) —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 09:42, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Pro et contra

Folks, this kind of attitude [7] (and I mean both summaries) makes me sorry that I edit Wikipedia. I'm far from an expert on the Balto-Slavic languages, and not really a linguist, but from what I gathered from the literature, all I can say is that what is in the lede: "Baltic and Slavic languages share several linguistic traits not found in any other Indo-European branch, which points to the period of common development. However, there is an ongoing debate on the nature of that relationship: Some claim they were genetically related, and others explain similarities by prolonged language contact." And that debate can indeed be rather harsh even in the real world (selected exchange of fire [8][9]). Now, can you work on improving the citations and hashing out the differences, rather than calling each other vandals? I also added {{No footnotes}}, because the article sorely lacks them, despite volumes of available material on the subject. No such user (talk) 12:52, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I am really glad that a third opinion has been expressed here at last. I've been looking at this and several other related articles from time to time for years and from what I've seen I can say with utmost confidence that the articles have been "hijacked" by Ivan Štambuk and some of his (panslavic?) compatriots - they have been blatantly reverting *all* the edits, which even barely swayed the article away from their personal viewpoint.

It might seem barbaric to answer him in this way, but I simply saw no other choice. As you might've already noticed, I tried to point to the lack of citations and the unproportional attention attributed to the support of this hypothesis in the most civilized fashion, yet I instantly received ad hominem attacks.

I'm new to this whole wikipedia policies and guidelines thing and I've never had the time to pay more attention to this issue and I currently don't really have the time to rewrite the article from scratch, which, in my opinion, is the only way of completely getting rid of the huge bias, which can be easily seen throughout the article.

Also - the idea of a seperate, genetically related Balto-Slavic *language group* is supported only by a relatively small minority of Indo-Europeanists, therefore I fundamentally disagree with the way this article has been structured and formed. For instance, note the fact that all the infoboxes, which can also be found in various other articles, contain the line "genetic classification" and amusingly include the hypothetical Balto-Slavic language group as one of the main groupings, which is an utter disgrace. This has already misinformed a huge number of people. As a matter of fact, Baltic and Slavic were considered as being seperate language groups (and I haven't heard of a Balticist, who'd have a trace of doubt about that) here until Ivan Štambuk decided to shape wikipedia into his own liking.

So, all in all, I completely agree that something needs to be done about this, yet unfortunately there is no way of hashing out the differences. For now, most likely I'll try to create a seperate paragraph, which would sum up the criticism directed towards the Balto-Slavic concept.

Kursis (talk) 21:41, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Nonsense - it's accepted by a majority of Indo-Europeanists today, including basically all Balticists. Try e.g. reading some articles from Baltistica. The "debate" was over some 3 decades ago, and what's going on today is discussing lots of complex details involved in the reconstruction. Your "arguments" as far as I can tell boil down to spouting disgusting ethnocentric accusations. Learn some basic linguistics, gather some evidence other than your imagination, and then we can talk. Wikipedia is not a place to heal your Slavophobic traumas. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:58, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

No you obviously don't know much. There is a lots of debate, but on the existence of Balto-Slavic as a genetic node, but on the details of the reconstruction of Proto-Balto-Slavic language. There are similarly fierce debates in every other field of historical linguistics. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:53, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Ivan, this was obnoxious. For all I know, you might be right concerning the genetic relationship betwen Baltic and Slavic, but you summarily reverted with edit summary "revert all rubbish" my edits, which 1) introduced an inline citation supporting several of your points 2) added {{No footnotes}}. Do you deny that the article lacks footnotes? No? So fucking {{tl:sofixit}} rather than reverting to an even worse version 3) Rephrased the lead, in good faith; if you don't like it, feel free to revert it, but then spend some time to separate grain and chaff and explain why it was bad. As it is now, the article is sorely inadequate explaining the theories and controversies, even if you are 100% right. If you are such an expert in the field, please spend some time improving it rather than calling other good-faith editors names. No such user (talk) 07:19, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you reverted to Kursis' version which removed a bunch of valuable information, including referenced one. The article contains footnotes, but probably not as much as it should now (there used to be much more, but now that somebody has moved a bulk of content to [[Proto-Balto-Slavic language]] it obviously lacks). The current lead is just fine. This Kursis guy is an incarnation of endless line of Baltic nationalists who try to present the Balto-Slavic linguistic relationship from skewed political perspective. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 07:59, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, then please show me, which valuable information was removed there? Apart from tags, and citation of Concise encyclopedia of languages of the world which I inserted, the two versions differ in:

• Mostly irrelevant passage on Slavic influence in Greece
• Information about Thomas Olander which I moved from the lead (where it does not belong at all) in the lower section
• Reference to "former Soviet countries" which does not make sense in 1st millenium AD.
• Cleaned up some WP:WEASEL, like "a remarkable amount", "similarities..more than obvious", "from a modern perspective, the most acceptable theory..."

Apart from a number of quite reasonable {{fact}}, and cleaning up some irrelevant info, Kursis did not remove any cited material, so there is no "removal of referenced material and nationalist propaganda". A minimum WP:AGF from your side would be welcome. No such user (talk) 12:13, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

• That is not "irrelevant passage on Slavic influence in Greece", it's an important description of Slavic linguistic history. Slavic language spread along with Slavic cultural identity, and in its history it encompassed significant proportion of continental Greece. That is an important fact that needs to be mentioned. Other articles on proto-languages also cover the location of Urheimat, and how the language spread through migrations.
• How exactly Thomas Olander's seminal thesis does not "belong to the lead"? It's a citation for the claim stated in the lead, directly corroborating it. It's an important paper and must be mentioned.
• The "former Soviet countries" is is a perfectly valid regional designation. It is irrelevant that it does not make sense in the 1st millennium AD. If there is a more proper substitute, feel free replace it, just don't expunge data that you don't like or imagine them not to "make sense".

Kursis is a mindless Baltic nationalist that doesn't have clue what he's talking about, just like his countless predecessors that kept vandalizing this article in its history. He imagines that the whole Balto-Slavic classification is some "Soviet imperialist theory". His edits are a result of his internals nationalism-motivated frustrations, not a result of genuine interest in the article quality. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:27, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

• And Slavic influence in Greece is relevant to Balts exactly how?
• Then spend some time to explain why is Thomas Olander so seminal to be placed in the lead. As it is now, it may as well read "In his thesis Ivan Štambuk proved that..."
• "The former Soviet countries" is not a valid regional designation for 1st millenium.
• You also reverted the same WP:WEASEL words I fixed.

This is not about Kursis anymore. Kursis stopped editing a month ago. This is increasingly about your utter lack of respect for civilly expressed concerns of fellow wikipedians. Which is sad. You even fail to bother to revert only the paragraphs you find contentious. Go remove the "disputed" if you like, but removal of "No footnotes" tag for an article lacking footnotes amounts to "fuck you, I'll do as I like." No such user (talk) 15:51, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

* And Slavic influence in Greece is relevant to Balts exactly how? - Slavic ethnolinguistc genesis is important in understanding Balto-Slavic relationship. By properly illustrating that Slavic linguistic divergence and spread occurred relatively recently and across wide area, the Balto-Slavic relationship itself is more clear. Specifically, it is evident that Early Proto-Slavic was spoken as late as 600 AD, and that Early Proto-Slavic itself is a valid genetic note inside the Balto-Slavic clade, equally valid as Eastern Baltic and Western Baltic. This is contrasted with popular nationalist myths of Balts and Slavs being "indigenous" to their historical lands since the time immemorial, each independently stemming from PIE in the 5th millennium BCE.

Then spend some time to explain why is Thomas Olander so seminal to be placed in the lead. - His entire thesis is a review of the last 3 decades of Balto-Slavic accentology, and how to the discovered laws reflect the Balto-Slavic language grouping (i.e., are we dealing with independent parallel innovations, areal spread of isoglosses, or true unified development of a proto-language). That paper is put to corroborate the following statement in the lead: Modern research, especially with insights gained in the field of comparative Balto-Slavic accentology, corroborates the claim of genetic relationship. That statement is perfectly true, and supported with a credible reference. I don't see why it should be removed.

The former Soviet countries" is not a valid regional designation for 1st millenium - I explained why this is immaterial. We refer to these areas in their modern terms. Whether Soviet Union existed in the 1st millenium AD is irrelevant. The purpose of the written discourse is to convey meaning, specifically in this sentence to describe certain lands in the Baltics. In no way does that statement even insinuate that these areas were part of a Soviet Union in the 1st millenium.

You also reverted the same WP:WEASEL words I fixed. - You removed entire sentences while doing so. There is nothing "weasel" in constructs such as "From a modern perspective". Replacing remarkable by some is downplaying of the actual extent of similarities. Etc. Your edits are problematic and erroneous on numerous levels.

This is not about Kursis anymore. Kursis stopped editing a month ago - Yes it's about him, because he originally vandalized the article and inserted all that gibberish. I forgot to monitor this article in the meantime, and that junk unfortunately remained. Now it's gone. Spare me of moral sermons. All the statements in the article can be sourced in the literature listed at references. Kursis inserted bunch of NPOV/disputed tag, partly on a most innocuous and commonsense claims, in order to make the article look "controversial", without actually bringing any issues at the talk page. That is simply unacceptable. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:48, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

So let us, piece by piece, again see what you reverted here and where is that "junk":

• Top: you remove "NPOV" tag (fine by me) and "No footnotes" (which, again, is highly inappropriate).
• Leading paragraph: statement "...points to the period of common development. However, there is an ongoing debate on the nature of that relationship. Some claim they were genetically related, and others explain similarities by prolonged language contact." properly referenced to Concise encyclopedia of languages of the world removed. That very statement was taken from 3rd paragraph of "your" version.
• 2nd paragraph: you remove {{cn}} tag from unreferenced statement "A hypothetical Proto-Balto-Slavic language is also reconstructable". Removing proper cn tags may be considered vandalism, you know.
• 3rd paragraph: as I said above, already existing in 1st
• Historical dispute, 1st paragraph: you restore "Even though the similarities between Baltic and Slavic languages are often more than obvious". I agree that they are often more than obvious, but this is not exactly encyclopedic wording. Ok, have it your way.
• Historical dispute, 2nd paragraph: Now you actually remove Olander. In your version, there is no more mentioning of Olander in the article proper. Maybe that was the intent (fine by me).
• Modern interpretation, 3rd paragraph: you restore "around AD 600, uniform Proto-Slavic with no detectable dialectal differentiation was spoken from Thessaloniki in Greece to Novgorod in Russia". Fine by me.
• Modern interpretation, 3rd paragraph: you also restore a long note about Slavic in continental Greece, which is completely irrelevant to the matter.
• Modern interpretation, 3rd paragraph: you restore the anachronic "former Soviet countries". Not a big deal, but certainly less than optimal wording.
• Next paragraph: You add "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.". Fine by me, though you could spare a citation here.
• Not entering into fine detail anymore: below, you remove a handful of {{cn}}s (which may be considered vandalism, you know), remove {{dead link}} from Olander's thesis (which I'm gonna fix), and remove several bot-maintained changes.

So, I don't see anything substantial left from Kursis' original "vandalism" (though I also highly disagree with your characterization of it) For the last time, I will fix what I think should be fixed according to the analysis above, and remove this stuff from my watchlist so that you can have it your way. I will also spare you moral sermons in the future, except for the last one: you are knowledgeable in this stuff, and it's too bad that you're such a jerk. No such user (talk) 07:03, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

When users, such Kursis, make claims of pan-Slavism against well intentioned and well informed editors, they only unmask their own bias. Whichever way one looks at it, Baltic and SLavic formed a late PIE macrodialectical group that partially disintegrated but still underwent a highly significant number of common innovations Hxseek (talk) 11:11, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Ivan Štambuk's odd edit comment

I find Ivan Štambuk edit comment "Balto-Slavic is generally established genetical node, we've been over this countless times, spare us of your Baltic nationalism and separatism - it's fringe and it doesn't belong to the lead" when he reverts something sourced to Encyclopaedia Britannica [10] rather odd, because:

1. I'm not a Balt,
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica isn't a fringe source[11]

BTW, what's the difference between Balto-Slavic languages and Proto-Balto-Slavic languages, Wikipedia seems to be unique in making such a distinction. --Martin (talk) 11:44, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

You cannot use other encyclopedias such as Britannica as a source, and specialized sources have precedence over general-purpose sources such as Britannica. Specialized sources in this case support the Balto-Slavic grouping as a genetic node. Whether you're a Balt or not is irrelevant - judging by your edit history your motives are at best very suspicious, especially considering that the "hypothetical" part was repeatedly being inserted (also citing Britannica) by other Baltic nationalist (possibly a sockuppet of yours?!) back in 2008, when the article was in shambles. Balto-Slavic grouping is generally supported among the vast majority of the specialists in the field, and the general tone of the article is in that light also generally supportive of it. By inserting misleading words such as hypothetical we're implying some kind of an uncertainty where there is none. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 23:46, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

There is no consensus among the scholar, if there is a genetic relationship between the Baltic languages and Slavic languages, or the similarities are a result of intensive language contacts. That's what Britannica means by using the word 'hypothetical', and that's why Russian Wikipedia also classifies the subject as гипотетическая группа языков (hypothetical language group), whilst the article in German Wiki is entitled Balto-slawische Hypothese. That Ivan Štambuk or other Wikipedians think they have 'been over this countless times' does not mean we should pretend there is a clear consensus among the scholars where there isn't one. Miacek and his crime-fighting dog (woof!) 12:23, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and you concluded that no consensus exists how exactly? The power of your imagination coupled with selective vision and hearing apparatus? Great strides have been made in Indo-European historical linguistics in the past 3 decades, and Britannica articles, especially shitty stubs like the one your friend cites, do not reflect the current communis opinio of the field. Other cites of yours-the German and Russian wikipedia-are also laughable. Can you find a peer-reviewed journal article, linguistic encyclopedia or some other specialized work published in the last 10 years, supportive of your thesis? You know, something other than randomly Googled web pages? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 23:53, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

"In the prehistoric period the Baltic and Slavic languages were so closely related that many linguists speak of a Balto-Slavic proto-language. After the two groups had seen major division, the Slavic languages began expanding over territory previously occupied by speakers of Baltic languages." (Mallory, Oxford Introduction to PIE and the PIE World, OUP, 2006, p. 25) This pretty much sums up the present situation. I haven't, however, met any linguists so far who do not fall into the "many" group above, inasmuch as they regard the differentiation of PIE in the traditional tree-and-branch model. Some of the more polemic proponents of the wave model choose not to deal with notions such as "proto-language", which in my view is throwing out a rather large batch of kids with the bath water. But of course hypothetical is the correct word in the present situation, without any negative connotation. Trigaranus (talk) 14:04, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

It has a negative connotation - it introduces an unnecessary level of uncertainty, as if implying "you know, we're not 100% that Baltic and Slavic languages are exclusively genetically related", which is nonsense. Balto-Slavic language itself is hypothetical in the senses "not attested" and "cannot be attested", but nobody today questions the validity of the Balto-Slavic grouping itself. I don't see the articles on [[Germanic languages]] or [[Indo-Iranian languages]] having the hypothetical shite in the lead. So let's not contaminate this article either. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 00:01, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

The relationship between Baltic and Slavic languages is by no means settled. The Concise encyclopedia of languages of the world By Keith Brown, Sarah Ogilvie states "The nature of the relationship between the Baltic and Slavic languages has long been a source of debate" and goes on to list a number of differing viewpoints. Evidently you do not have a good command of English, hypothetical has no negative connotation here, in context of this topic it means suppositional, as in something assumed but not proven, as in hypothesis. I recommend you tone down your language, claiming those you disagree with are "Baltic nationalists" or "sock puppets" of Baltic nationalists is both uncivil and an assumption of bad faith, and you may well be sanctioned if you continue down this path. --Martin (talk) 20:59, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

You don't have a clue what you're talking about. The debate has indeed been settled - of the mainstream Indo-Europeanists and Balto-Slavicists I don't think that there is anyone disputing the grouping. Many details of the Balto-Slavic reconstruction are themselves disputed, as I stated above, but that's an entirely different thing. The article that you link to above, written by S. Young, does not at all list "a number of differing viewpoints". Can you read English language with comprehension?! Yes, the nature of the relationship has been-note the past tense-a source of debate, but that debate is pretty much over now. Historical overview has been presented in the article in the section ==Historical dispute==. In fact, there is so much material on that matter that it merits an article of its own (see e.g. Olander's book). Young's article goes on to list many exclusive Balto-Slavic isoglosses (almost all of them also covered in the article), after which come 3 paragraphs of the historical theories, concluding with Ivanov-Toporov's model of East Baltic, West Baltic and Slavic all being 3 equal branches of Balto-Slavic, which is the opinion of the mainstream scholarhship today on the matter, and the model presented as the mainstream both here and the article on Baltic languages. You surely don't expect us to treat the obsolete theories from the beginning of the last century with those of today? That would be absurd. We must give precedence to the most current and up-to-date scholarship.

Evidently you do not have a good command of English, hypothetical has no negative connotation here, in context of this topic it means suppositional, as in something assumed but not proven, as in hypothesis. - Even though I'm not a native speaker of English, by command of it has been praised by native speakers on many occasions. I assure you that my command of technical/scientific English is sufficiently advanced to detect maliciously implanted uncertainties that undermine the clarity of exposition. In particular, the words "hypothesis" and "hypothetical" are very dangerous, especially to laymen, and have been on many occasions misused by maliciously-minded bigots to trivialize scientifically valid theories (corroborated by the vast amounts on logically coherent and self-supportive scholarship). Perhaps you've heard of the quite popular "Evolution is just a theory" argument before? Anyway, the point is, as I've retorted above, that all the proto-languages are hypothetical by their nature, and it's pointless to emphasize that fact specifically on this article. Why don't you insert that hypothetical crap on the articles on Proto-Germanic language? Oh I see, you only care that this article. Sorry, it cannot go. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:36, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't put much stock in the more "nationalist" contentions that Baltic and Slavic are totally independent and share vocabulary only by physical proximity of peoples. After that, the jury is still out as to did Baltic branch off from Slavic, did Slavic branch off from Baltic, which of Baltic or Slavic are therefore considered more the "parent", etc. Interestingly, I don't think that I've ever seen a diagram which simply contends language 1 (Balto-Slavic proto) bifurcating equally to subsequently evolved language 2 (Baltic) and language 3 (Slavic). I'd echo the sentiment to tone down the rhetoric, there are no Baltic or Slavophile extremists here. In the absence of conclusive evidence, everything is a hypothesis; some hypotheses are just more hypothetical than others. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 21:48, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

the jury is still out as to did Baltic branch off from Slavic, did Slavic branch off from Baltic, which of Baltic or Slavic are therefore considered more the "parent", etc. - No, the jury is not "out there". Your tactic here is quite obvious: you try to trivialize all theories, knowing that the specific theory that you espouse doesn't stand a chance of being presented as equal in importance and acceptance among the credible experts on the topic. "Everything is a hypothesis, there are no definite answers" - Right. My accusations of nationalism are also perfectly in place - none of you guys has a genuine interest in improving the article, or a genuine interest in linguistics for that matter - you just want to make sure that the pro-Baltic victimization viewpoint (of having nothing to do with "dirty, imperialist Slavs", Balto-Slavic theory being just one of those many "oppression" mechanisms) is sufficiently advanced in the article. But you're too smart to believe all that nationalist fantasy of cultural separatism and antiquity from the PIE times, so you create sockpuppets such as Gotho-Baltic (talk · contribs) which do the dirty work. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:13, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Please remove yourself your own nasty personal assaults. I mean the absurd fantasy that one of use “create[d] sockpuppets such as Gotho-Baltic (talk · contribs) which do the dirty work” and the vicious claim that me or anyone else “just want to make sure that the pro-Baltic victimization viewpoint (of having nothing to do with "dirty, imperialist Slavs")”. If you had cared to look, you would have noticed that quite a lot of my articles deal with Slavic people, and no-where did I write anything close to the line of "dirty, imperialist Slavs" you wanna attribute us. That you'd come up with anything like that just shows how distorted your mind is. Thanks in advance. Miacek and his crime-fighting dog (woof!) 14:04, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

A short comment: I agree with both Martin and Vecrumba. First, Ivan should drop accusations of nationalism he's been liberally disseminating here and there. Name-calling raises the question, whether this derives from lack of substantial arguments on the accuser's part and is hence counterproductive to his own line. Secondly, comparing the matter at hand with Germanic languages and the lack of the notion 'hypothetical' in the lead there is nothing more than a straw man argument. The group Germanic languages is universally accepted and defined, whilst the Balto-Slavic group simply isn't [12], not the least because no common Balto-Slavic archaelogical culture has been identified [13]. Whilst Matasović, Ranko (2008) or other sources from the last couple of decades may well have furthered the thesis of a Slavic group coming into being in the periphery of the Baltic languages, this still hasn't been accepted as definitive explanation, hence Britannica's cautious line that I think we should follow, too. Miacek and his crime-fighting dog (woof!) 22:58, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Name-calling raises the question, whether this derives from lack of substantial arguments on the accuser's part and is hence counterproductive to his own line. - Very funny! Especially since I'm the only one here who has a clue on the topic! PS: I don't think that complaining about nationalist bias of the interlocutors goes as name-calling. It's not that I've called you and idiot or something. From my experience almost all "nationalists" are quite proud of the title!

The group Germanic languages is universally accepted and defined, whilst the Balto-Slavic group simply isn't [3] - Balto-Slavic grouping is indeed accepted by majority of Indo-Europeanist and Balto-Slavicists. I challenge you to find me a peer-reviewed paper/work published in the last 10 years that openly refutes it. Citing from the work that you link, in the last sentence it says: It may well be that many of the similarities shared by Baltic and Slavic reflect not just a period of common prehistory, but the fact that they were neighbors from PIE times to the present and thus kept influencing each other for millennia, both in structure and in vocabulary.. So obviously the author doesn't think too much about those anti-BS dissenters!

not the least because no common Balto-Slavic archaelogical culture has been identified [4] - See footnote #11 and the image in this very article. I don't know much about archeology, but I do know there the location of the Slavic Urheimat is not definitely solved and that there are many proposed locations and timelines, let alone for Balto-Slavic itself! However, to claim that no Balto-Slavic culture has been identified is an argument against Balto-Slavic linguistic unity is plainly stupid - the absence of evidence is is not the same as the evidence against.

Whilst Matasović, Ranko (2008) or other sources from the last couple of decades may well have furthered the thesis of a Slavic group coming into being in the periphery of the Baltic languages, this still hasn't been accepted as definitive explanation, hence Britannica's cautious line that I think we should follow, too. - The sources from the last couple of decades are based on the most up-to-date scholarship. Most of the evidence corroborating Balto-Slavic linguistic unity has only been discovered relatively recently. We cannot give the same precedence to obsolete and modern theories. Britannica article is pretty much worthless stub based on obsolete theories. NPOV approach requires us to ignore the theories which are not widely accept anymore. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:13, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Baltic and Slavic and Indo-European

The vast majority of Indo-Europeanists accept Baltic as a valid single clade within Indo-European (see the various stammbaum offered in all the modern introductory texts on Indo-European--Fortson, Clackson, etc.). The notion that there was no Baltic clade is not supported within the mainstream Indo-European literature. The whole section "Modern interpretation" is not based on modern, accepted Indo-European scholarship, but is a WP:FRINGE position from the 1960s. It is not accepted in the 21st century by the vast majority of Indo-Europeanists. Fortson (2010, Indo-European Language and Culture), Mallory & Adams (2006, The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World), Szemerényi (1990, Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics), Beekes (1995, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics), Schmalsteig (1998, "The Baltic Languages," The Indo-European Languages, ed. Ramat & Ramat), Clackson (2007, Indo-European Linguistics), Baldi (1983, An Introduction to the Indo-European Languages), etc. all support Baltic as a clade. This is the mainstream position and the "Baltic is not a clade" is a minority view and to give it an entire section violates WP:UNDUE. --Taivo (talk) 17:38, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

That's nonsense. None of those works actually claim that Baltic group is a genetic grouping, let alone provide evidence for it in the form of Common Baltic sound changes and Common Baltic proto-language. I inspected most of them as I've already replied you here: Talk:Baltic_languages#Baltic_as_a_valid_IE_group. Baltic language group is leftover - the last part of Balto-Slavic dialect continuum that remained after the Slavic branch split. You have yet to privde a single citation for your "meainstream position". Show us some real quotations from some of the current Balto-Slavicists (you know, the guys publishing papers and books on the topic, participating the relevant conferences, and stuff) that reconstruct Proto-Baltic, not some general-purpose "IE culture" textbooks that deal with the topic tangentially in a paragraph or too. You have none. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 19:28, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

It might be that Ivan has been overplaying the importance of the sources from recent decades expressing the views he personally subscribes to. I noticed the article Proto-Balto-Slavic language also relies heavily on just a couple of articles. Miacek and his crime-fighting dog (woof!) 17:42, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Why do you keep commenting on the matter you don't have a clue about, Miacek? What my personal motivations are for editing this particular article (which I mostly rewrote after it presented some brain-dead article from Baltic nationalist magazine as some kind of modern theory) is none of your business. Go and hunt some commies, and spare us of your armchair Freud analyses. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 19:28, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Ivan, you are engaged in improper WP:SYN on the sources I've cited, which ALL include a Baltic node in their discussions of Indo-European. Your characterization of them is totally inaccurate. If they did not accept Baltic as a node of Indo-European, then they would not have 1) included chapters or subsections exclusively devoted to Baltic or 2) included a Baltic node on their Stammbaum. Your anti-Baltic POV is not supported by the majority of Indo-Europeanists, so characterizing it as such is utter falsehood. Clackson, for example, shows the definitive Pennsylvania and New Zealand Stammbaum, which were arrived at by independent means, and both show Baltic as a distinct node. Stop your reversions until you actually build a consensus here. Read WP:CONSENSUS if you don't know what a consensus is. Two editors here are showing you that your claims of "majority" are false. --Taivo (talk) 20:26, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

I have edited the section to reduce the fawning worship of the non-Baltic model that is the minority view among Indo-Europeanists and to conform to WP:UNDUE. Ivan, you cannot push your own WP:SYN or WP:OR here. Your "analysis" of my sources is not what the sources say, but what you read into them. All of them list a Baltic node--period. --Taivo (talk) 20:38, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

• Computer-generated family trees -These are not genetic branches! These are statistical models that show us how "distant" phonology-wise inspected languages are. These models do not necessarily show us how languages branch over time - they would in ideal case, if we had attestations over all periods of time for all languages. For something to be classified as a genetic branch, you must show exclusive common innovation. So far Taivo, you have shown exactly none for Baltic! --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 22:53, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Neither are the results of glottochronology genetic branches!! --Taivo (talk) 23:02, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Ivan, you continue to think that you and I are discussing this as one scholar to another with our original research and synthesis of sources. That is not the way that we do things in Wikipedia. We rely on reliable sources. You have presented sources that show that some Indo-Europeanists reject a Baltic node. That's all you can show with your sources. Your sources cannot override the fact that the most recent works on Indo-European as a whole still have a Baltic node parallel with a Slavic node. Even Koordlandt (I probably spelled that wrong) says that "Old Prussian is closer to Lithuanian and Latvian than to Slavic". I do very well understand what a shared innovation is, but in Wikipedia it is sourcing that matters and while you have enough sources to show that eventually the I-E community may stop talking about Baltic, that is not the case right now. The majority of IE sources right now show a Baltic node. That's what you have to live with for the present. --Taivo (talk) 23:00, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Once again: none of your sources explicitly makes a statement "Baltic branch is node itself within Balto-Slavic". All you have in-between-the-lines reading and subjective interpretation. None of them tries to reconstruct Common Baltic language, list or establish chronology of sound changes under which it developed. Instead, they list shared archaisms in opposition to the more innovative Slavic branch of Balto-Slavic. You have not sufficiently studied the matter, your conclusions are premature and based on obsolete scholarship. You willfully ignore evidence from specialists in the field which have a much better into this extremely complex matter, much more than some 200-page "IE culture" textbooks like that of Clackson. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 23:16, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

• [14], [15] even more censorship and content butchering by Taivo, all under thinly-veiled agenda for "NPOV". Indeed, if there are non-trivial isoglosses excuslively connecting Baltic languages, why don't you list them, instead of removing a cited statement claiming that there are none? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 23:08, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

You still don't understand that this is not a research project, Ivan. You cannot do WP:OR or WP:SYN here. My sources are explicit--they show a node in a Stammbaum that links all the Baltic languages together. That is not just "reading between the lines". That is looking at an overt Stammbaum. I don't have to "provide isoglosses". I have to provide reliable sources that show a Baltic branch either of Indo-European or Balto-Slavic. That is what the sources do. You have shown that a minority of sources do not accept a Baltic node (for whatever reason). I have shown that a majority of sources accept a Baltic node. Wikipedia is not the place for your "ground-breaking" research. Wikipedia is the place to report on what reliable sources say and the majority of reliable sources link the Baltic languages into a node. You can't get around that. We have stated your minority position in these articles, but that does not mean that you can eliminate the majority position just because you don't accept it. --Taivo (talk) 02:55, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

But we do give greater credence to specialist sources than to general or introductory ones, to recent sources over old ones.

Ivan, I don't understand the statement "Thus Ivanov and Toporov questioned not only Balto-Slavic unity, but also Baltic unity" when we just said that they proposed that BS split into three, suggesting they support BS. That's also hardly a recent source, though of course the computer-generated trees don't belong either: with s.t. this well studies, surely we can do better than crude statistical analyses. — kwami (talk) 06:45, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

It's meant to say that in that work they questioned both the notion of common Balto-Slavic (which didn't have a definite answer in the 1960s), but also the notion of common Baltic. The reasoning goes, if no Common Baltic can be established, either 1) Baltic languages (Eastern and Western branch) were separate from PIE times or 2) isoglosses that they share with some other branch X (with X being Slavic much more than some other) are arguments in favor of the genetic unity of X, E and W Baltic. I haven't read the paper tho, just a summary of it in a few paragraphs in one Serbo-Croatian textbook on PIE. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 17:20, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

While we do give greater credence to specialist sources by mentioning them, we also should not be running along the latest path without some indication that we will not be alone in running along that path. It could very well be in the next 5 years that this becomes the prevailing view, but when equally specialist sources still list the opposite view (Ringe's work and the New Zealand Stammbaum, for example) then we need to be careful about running down that path. --Taivo (talk) 12:37, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Inconsistency

In the article on Winter's Law, it is said that it operated "prior to" /o/ to /a/. In the article on Proto-Balto-Slavic, it has "1. .../o/ to/a/" and "4.Winter's Law...". The lower number "1." implies that the shift /o/ to /a/ was earlier than the operation of Winter's law. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.148.116.161 (talk) 16:54, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

See Winter's law.

See Proto-Balto-Slavic_language#Relative_chronology_of_sound_changes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.27.15.185 (talk) 14:59, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Most important isoglosses

The text says, "...close...exclusive...most important...". I want all these isoglosses, not just the most important.

Of the ten isoglosses said to be most important, six refer to grammar. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.27.15.185 (talk) 15:25, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Relative chronology

It is said that "relative chronology" is "most important". It is not clear why this is so. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.157.131.67 (talk) 15:49, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

It is most important because it helps to decide whether a change/feature is old enough to matter with regard to subgrouping. A change which happened in the Middle Ages would not matter even if it had happened in all the Baltic and Slavic languages, and it may well be possible to determine this lateness of the change through relative chronology. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:30, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

See

See Talk:Lithuanian language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.193.97.141 (talk) 11:37, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Use of "descend"

The article repeatedly uses the phrasing "descended from", as in "Russian descended from Proto-Slavic". This seems incorrect to me as it would imply that this relationship held true at a time, but does not anymore, which is patent nonsense: Descent is an unchanging property (as opposed to the consensus regarding hypotheses about descent, of course). Correct phrasings are "Russian descends from Proto-Slavic" or "Russian is descended from Proto-Slavic". I'm bringing up this point on the talk page because the mistake may be found in other articles as well, and because I'm not sure if I'm not being overly pedantic here. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:46, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

I think you're being overly pedantic. I actually prefer "X descended from Y" over "X descends from Y". It just sounds more correct. --Taivo (talk) 23:10, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

This debate involving Taivo and Blaschke is fatuous to a considerable degree. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.254.141.145 (talk) 17:24, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

You're new to Wikipedia, aren't you? --Taivo (talk) 03:50, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

It's just a difference in POV. I prefer the present tense myself. But the past tense does not imply that it is no longer true, only that we view historical developments as occurring in the past. (Taivo, this is just the opposite of our other debate, where I wanted to put extinct languages in the past tense, and you wanted the present.) — kwami (talk) 20:05, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

The difference between our two debates, kwami, is that "extinct" is a state, while "descend" is an action. States that are still true are in the present, thus, "Prussian is extinct"; while actions occurred at some point in time, "Prussian descended from Proto-Baltic". --Taivo (talk) 22:19, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Not comparing it to "extinct", but to "Prussian *is* a Baltic language", when being extinct means Prussian isn't at all any more.

As for "descend", that can also be seen as a state: "X descends from Y" means "X is a descendent of Y". Rather like "my people come from Kentucky": they aren't on the road, but they identify themselves as being from Kentucky. — kwami (talk) 03:41, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

"Is a Baltic language", "Is extinct"--both are stative verbs. Prussian is still a Baltic language even when you learn about it from a book. It didn't stop being a Baltic language just because people don't speak it anymore. It didn't suddenly become a language isolate. But action verbs are not so "timeless". I still stand by my intuition and preference, although it is not something I'll go around reverting. --Taivo (talk) 03:46, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Of course it's not an isolate. It's not a language at all, any more than dead people are people. My point is that, though you can speak of things of the past in present tense, and you choose to do that for extinct languages, you choose to do the opposite for descent. By your own argument, Prussian didn't stop being a Baltic language once it stopped "descending"; my point is that, until it went extinct, it never did stop descending, because it continued to evolve. As for your argument of "be" being a stative verb, that would mean Nero is still emperor of Rome, that once something is, it will always be. In a sense that's true (Nero "is" the 5th emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty), but no more for classification than for descent. — kwami (talk) 04:38, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

I disagree that just because a language is extinct it isn't a language anymore. Languages can continue to exist in the form of written texts, notes by linguists, tape recordings, songs etc., it's not as clear-cut as with people: "language death" is only a metaphor. The policy to treat extinct languages (or earlier stages of languages, attested, reconstructed or neither) as different from currently spoken languages (the difference being rather a matter of convention, especially with well-attested languages that may still be in use as second languages, such as Latin – these cases are really complicated) is more trouble than it's worth. I find it best to simply say X language is/has without worrying whether it's extinct or not. In the case of many languages, their current status is often unknown or ambiguous anyway (does this lone semi-speaker/rememberer still count as a native speaker, just like Tuone Udaina? Or is the language effectively extinct as a community language, nobody really using it for conversation anymore, and thus a thing of the past?). You're just getting yourself into hell's kitchen with this.

As for descend, Wiktionary explains one sense as "to be derived", with the example: a beggar may descend from a prince (as opposed to may be descended, which is, of course, also possible, but a beggar (has) descended from a prince is unidiomatic, or would mean something else), confirming that in this case, the verb does not designate an action, but a status – the action is only present as a metaphor (an ossified one). --Florian Blaschke (talk)

What the theoretical advantages are

Gentlemen!

Apparently the debate is highly emotional. As a non-linguist and interested layman not having a stake in either the Slavs' being grouped together with the Balts or in their not being so grouped, I should humbly like to ask what you think that the theoretical advantages of accepting the Balto-Slavic theory (or hypothesis, if you prefer) are. Is fighting over it really worth so much while? It is clear that the Baltic and the Slavic languages are appreciably close to each other, perhaps more so than either is to say Germanic or Iranian, and it is also clear that they are different: Polish and Macedonian are, methinketh, considerably more like each other than either is like Lithuanian. Que diable, then? What would it change if the existence of a Proto-Balto-Slavic language is asserted or not (and common Indo-European dialects are assumed to have existed, instead)? Thank you in advance. 78.49.0.151 (talk) Wojciech Żełaniec —Preceding undated comment added 09:39, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Politics certainly add to the controversy outside academics, but for linguists they do not matter (and personally, I do not see why the issue should matter in politics at all – no entitlements can be justified with historical linguistics, and what happened in pre-Christian Eastern Europe has little immediate relevance for now). They are just interested if the similarities between Baltic and Slavic are due to a distinctive Proto-Balto-Slavic language stage (distinctive from Proto-Indo-European, that is), or exclusively the result of later convergence. I would say that the ability to reconstruct a Proto-Balto-Slavic language would be very advantageous for the purposes of Indo-European linguistics, because it would greatly assist the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European and help understand the complicated developments to the individual modern Baltic and Slavic languages and dialects. A Proto-Balto-Slavic reconstruction would basically provide the equivalent of finding a new ancient Indo-European language perhaps about as archaic, and as old, as Ancient Greek or Sanskrit in many aspects, and simplify things (you don't always need to delve into the individual languages). In the many millennia between Proto-Indo-European and the modern Baltic and Slavic languages and dialects, there are so many changes to keep track of, including lots of accent laws which are confusing even to regular Indo-European linguists, and Balto-Slavic accentology has become a veritable subspecialisation, a subfield of a subfield (historical Balto-Slavic linguistics) of a subfield (historical Indo-European linguistics) of a subfield of linguistics. On that long road, Proto-Balto-Slavic, just like Proto-Slavic or Old East Slavic, provide important stops. What is also exciting is that any feature or word reconstructible to either Proto-Slavic or the earliest Baltic is now a candidate for Proto-Balto-Slavic, which would mean not only a rich nominal but also verbal morphology (with optative, future, aorist, imperative of the third person, and many verbal nouns and adjectives). Words and roots reconstructed for Proto-Balto-Slavic, even if attested in no other Indo-European language, and especially if they are attested in another Indo-European language, are also candidates for potentially being of Proto-Indo-European age. However, the existence of a Proto-Balto-Slavic stage also means that the mere fact of a word or root being found in both Baltic and Slavic (even if it is apparently old within both) definitely does not mean that it is highly likely to be very old, while a word or root that is found both in Germanic (or Celtic, or Italic) and Indo-Iranian is highly likely to be of Proto-Indo-European age. Moreover, as an added bonus, Proto-Balto-Slavic reconstructions, while quite archaic, as well, look more familiar than Proto-Indo-European reconstructions. Of course, that Proto-Balto-Slavic would be cool to have is on its own no reason to accept it, a compelling case has to be made, too; but I think this case can be made, and has already largely been made, accentology (and, I think, word-final developments even more) providing the best arguments or even decisive proof. At least Fortson's well-respected and popular handbook already accepts Balto-Slavic as fact, which is great for Wikipedia because handbooks are the best guide to what is state of the art in a field of enquiry. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:33, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Add more words to "Shared vocabulary"

Someone need to add words - Ekran (screen) same in LT, LV, RUS and Зубы (Russian) the same as PL-zęby, LV-zobi, CZ-zuby)

more: ekran-экран reklama-Реклама akcia-акция — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.109.65.175 (talk) 16:09, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Those are recent loanwords, and are therefore not relevant to what is being discussed. What matters here is shared vocabulary that dates to the Balto-Slavic period. CodeCat (talk) 17:15, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Concept of "descent"

The current introductory part states that One particularly innovative dialect separated from the Balto-Slavic dialect continuum and became ancestral to the Proto-Slavic language, from which all Slavic languages descended. It doesn’t make sense since it implies that the formation of Slavic branch kept Balto-Slavic group intact. It also directly contradicts to the illustrative scheme.--Ąžuolas (talk) 20:06, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure what is confusing about it. What do you mean by "intact"? Balto-Slavic split apart, and one of its branches was Slavic. Then a while later Slavic itself split apart further. CodeCat (talk) 21:14, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, but what happened to the Baltic languages? They still remained "Balto-Slavic"?––Ąžuolas (talk) 23:44, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Basically it means that Slavic languages are Baltic, but no-one calls them that. — kwami (talk) 23:56, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

As I said, it directly contradicts to the visual scheme in the article. And by the way, it sounds absurd, since the length of evolution of each Baltic and Slavic language is identical.––Ąžuolas (talk) 00:15, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

What Kwami means is that the Baltic languages are the group that was left after Slavic split off. Baltic = Balto-Slavic minus Slavic. And could you elaborate on what is absurd? I don't understand. CodeCat (talk) 02:40, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Now we’re getting somewhere. The sentence lacks that clear distinction and a reference to the proto-Baltic language. And it’s going to be tough, since some "clever" guy has merged Proto-Baltic into Proto-Balto-Slavic_language. In the article Lithuanian language, the sentence "The Proto-Balto-Slavic languages branched off directly from Proto-Indo-European, then branched into Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic." leads to Proto-Balto-Slavic_language instead of Proto-Baltic. It basically tells us that something branched into itself.--Ąžuolas (talk) 10:36, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

I think that the existence of Proto-Baltic is actually disputed, at least to some degree. Some notable linguists believe that Balto-Slavic split into three instead of two, creating East Baltic, West Baltic and Slavic branches. The Baltic languages article has more on this. CodeCat (talk) 15:49, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Every single piece of visual information in the article confirms the common descent of all the Baltic languages, which is not the same as for the Slavic languages. The only thing one can dispute about proto-Baltic is whether it is proto-Baltic or proto-Eastern-Baltic.--Ąžuolas (talk) 17:19, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Nobody disputes whether the Baltic or Slavic languages descend from a common ancestor. CodeCat (talk) 17:47, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Love how kwami put it! @Ąžuolas the visual schemes could perhaps be considered outdated by today's standards. What seems to be gaining currency is that Slavic was an innovative, "explosive" offshoot from West Baltic (from what I've seen.) In light of this the current name is a bit of an anachronism. If one would want a non-anachronistic name and avoid such circular sentences the thing should be named "Baltic" and Slavic should be renamed Neo Baltic or something (well, if you want to follow a super-strict chronological order.) Goes without saying that no one is going to do that (well, at least not yet.) Secondly "Proto-Baltic" (by its earlier definition) goes into the trash (the distance between Lith. and Prus. is as big as it is between Lith. and Slav. – that's what they mean with "equidistant.") Instead you would get Proto-East Baltic (parent of Lithuanian) and Proto-West Baltic (parent of Slavic at some point and later Prussian) but then given the fact that people might be hesitant to rename Slavic languages "Neo Baltic" or something to that effect you would need to stick "Slavic" in all of those names even though East Baltic (according to some people's theories) is a "Slav-free" branch chronologically. And then there's the issue that all of this stuff is from 21st century. How long does it take to come up with a protolanguage? Probably quite some time, so it might be a while before Lithuanian gets a "Proto-East Baltic" protolanguage. OK, kwami was much more eloquent, lol, but this is my explanation to the rather valid concern raised here and the reasons why you might have trouble finding a "Baltic-Baltic" instead of a Balto-Slavic protolanguage for Lith./Latv. Neitrāls vārds (talk) 00:26, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

In a sense, you have the same situation with respect to birds and dinosaurs. Birds are a subset of the theropod group of dinosaurs. Do we stop calling our feathered friends "birds", however? No. We recognize the descent issue, but stick to common English naming (at least for now). The same is true of Slavic. We won't stop calling these languages "Slavic" even though we recognize that they are just a subset of of one branch of Baltic (or "Balto-Slavic"). The problem isn't "Slavic", the problem is with "Baltic". We no longer have a Baltic node that is not identical with the Balto-Slavic node. Perhaps the best solution is to disconnect West Baltic from "Baltic" (we're talking naming only here, not actually genetic relationship). Thus "Balto-Slavic" would yield "Baltic", "Prusso-Slavic". "Prusso-Slavic" would yield Old Prussian and Slavic. --Taivo (talk) 01:34, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

I do find these new theories reasonable, but the article should firstly reflect well-established scientific sources. If Western Baltic gave rise to both Prussian and ancient Slavonic language, Prussian should be closer (and not equidistant!) to modern Slavonic languages instead of Lithuanian or Latvian. Is this the current scientific consensus?--Ąžuolas (talk) 14:27, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't think so. What appears to be solidly established are the so-called Slavic, "West Baltic", and "East Baltic" groups (for want of better terms; Latvian–Lithuanian is a bit clumsy and potentially prone to misunderstandings, and West Baltic – as well as East Baltic – seem to have included additional extinct dialects, which are, however, mostly virtually unattested, or at least not directly attested, certainly not in the form of texts or inscriptions), and currently, the notion that these three groups form a genetic family conventionally called "Balto-Slavic", descended from a "Proto-Balto-Slavic" idiom, can probably justifiably be called the prevailing (but not necessarily unanimous) consensus. (I'm not aware of any currently active researcher – in particular specialist – who dissents, however. It's pretty much the orthodoxy now, and Fortson's introductory handbook has accepted it, which is as good as it gets. Even Eugen Hill, who used to be somewhat sceptical because he found the accentological evidence as a whole rather impenetrable due to the sheer quantity of relevant data, eventually got off the fence as he figured out a couple of Proto-Balto-Slavic sound laws not related to the Balto-Slavic accent.)

So, what is still somewhat unclear is the issue of how the three subbranches are interrelated. I'm sympathetic to the view that the traditional Baltic group is not a genetic node; it seems to be unfounded now that Balto-Slavic genetic (not only areal) unity is established. A Prusso-Slavic node is an intriguing possibility, but I'm doubtful that it constitutes anywhere close to a consensus view, unless I have missed some very recent developments.

I'm not sure how the analogy with birds is relevant. There is some uncertainty as to how "birds" should be defined, whether they should be equated with the modern crown-group Neornithes or the wider group Avialae (which includes fossil toothed taxa such as Archaeopteryx) which includes various extinct taxa, but the descent of this group does not actually matter for this issue. Even if Avialae were not descended from dinosaurs (although my understanding is that it looks increasingly unlikely, and the dissent can be considered vanishingly marginal and barely significant by now, limited to Feduccia and perhaps a handful of other researchers), we would still call birds "birds". Under the view I and the others here sympathise with, Baltic comprises basically the conservative stay-at-home remainder of Balto-Slavic that failed to undergo typically Slavic innovations such as the "Great Slavic Vowel Shift" and the opening of syllables. Baltic, in this framework, is analogous to the non-avian dinosaurs (i. e., amniote tetrapods or more precisely archosaurs with toothed diapsid skulls which are more closely related to Passer domesticus than to crocodylians), which do not form a clade either – except that Baltic has partly survived, while non-avian dinosaurs are all extinct. In cladistic terms, Baltic is paraphyletic. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:30, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Only one sound law in common

Note that Proto-Balto-Slavic_language#Developement_from_Proto-Indo-European_to_Proto-Baltic says correctly that only one sound law is held in common by Baltic and Slavonic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.126.73.168 (talk) 12:52, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

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Kosovo

Kosovo should be gray in the map. Bunker92 (talk) 20:07, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

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Raising of stressed *o to *u in a final syllable

Eugen Hill:

“ It seems, therefore, to be securely established that pre-Proto-Balt *-os is reflected as Proto-Balt *-as

and Proto-Balt *-us at one and the same time in the same way as pre-Proto-Slav *-os is reflected as Proto-Slav *-o and Proto-Slav *- ŭ.

”

My native language is Lithuanian, I hope you understand my English. This guy comes to this conclusion because of existence of u-stem adjectives beside o-stem ones in Lithuanian, e. g. status 'vertikal' /stačias 'verical; upstanding' (Latvian stats < *statas), and because of the adjectives like brandus 'mature' formed from verb brendau 'I ripened', and he takes some other examples like that. No, this is total nonsense to come to this conclusion! E. Hill is either an ignoramus or a bold liar in Baltistics. He ignores both history of u-stem adjective development in Lithuanian and all researches that have been done about the subject. Lithuanian linguist Zigmas Zinkevičius has collected the most essential information of Lithuanistics and Baltistics into 5-9 books that are a ground of studies at universities. I refer to his books below my comment.

u-stem adjectives get more and more frequent in Lithuanian. In the written sources, we can see both wide spread of u-stem adjectives and lost of original u-stem endings in u-stem adjective paradigm. During last centuries (16th-), u-stem paradigm has got (j)o-stem endings and it became a subclass of jo-stem adjectives, it preserved a few u-stem endings only. There is a mix of two paradigms now, and this phenomenon is result of the last centuries, there is nothing to say about Proto-Baltic times. In Old Lithuanian literature and in the dialects, lots of modern u-stem adjectives originally were o-stem ones, e. g. bjauras 'disgusting', stipras 'strong', aštras 'sharp', pigas 'cheap', puikas 'wonderful', smulkas 'little', romas 'quiete' and more and more others. In modern Lithuanian, those adjectives have got sing. nominative u-stem ending -us. We have many doublets with -as / -us in modern Lithuanian: blaivus / blaivas 'sober', smailus/ smailas 'pointed', status/ stačias 'vertical; upstanding', žydrus /žydras 'sky-blue' etc. But u-stem nouns don't show the spread, they are rare. What is a reason?

Adjectives are matched with nouns in genders, and feminine of u-stem adjectives has jā-stem endings, as well as feminine adjectives of jo-stem. There is the only one case with different ending, it's sing. nominative. Every nominal with -i in sing. nominative belongs to jā-stem declension. So, we have platus (u-stem) 'broad' : plati (jā-stem) and gulsčias (jo-stem) 'lying; horizontal' : gulsčia (jā-stem). Pronominal, or definite, forms of feminine adjectives both with -ia (gulsčia) and -i (plati) have the same ending: gulsčioji and plačioji. So, feminine adjectives of u- and jo-stems have the same inflection. That is why u-stem adjectives (masculine) were transformed to jo-stem except 3 endings in singular (nominative platus, genitive plataus, accusative paltų) and 1 in plural (nominative platūs). u-stem adjectives became productive when they started to work as a subclass of jo-stem paradigm. In standard Lithuanian, pronominal u-stem adjectives have only 2 original endings: in sing. nominative (platusis) and in sing. accusative (platųjį). In Western dialects, the only 1 u-stem ending preserved (sing. nominative platus). In Western dialects, whole pronominal u-stem paradigm merged into jo-stem (sing. nominative plačiasis, sing. accusative plačiąjį), here is no pronominal u-stem inflection. In Old Lithuanian, u-stem adjectives preserved their original endings, and u-stem adjectives weren't so much productive like now because u- and jo-stems didn't overlap. So, it's a lie that "*-os is reflected as Proto-Balt *-as and Proto-Balt *-us.--Ed1974LT (talk) 20:02, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

• Zigmas Zinkevičius. Lietuvių kalbos istorinė gramatika. T. I. Vilnius, 1980.
• Zigmas Zinkevičius. Lietuvių kalbos istorinė gramatika. T. II. Vilnius, 1981
• Zigmas Zinkevičius. Lietuvių kalbos istorija. T. I. – Vilnius, 1984.
• Zigmas Zinkevičius. Lietuvių kalbos istorija. T. II. – Vilnius, 1987.
• Zigmas Zinkevičius. Lietuvių kalbos dialektologija. – Vilnius, 1994.

Do you have any reliable sources that counter Hill's conclusion? If not, then everything you posted is just WP:OR. Please provide sources or stop removing sourced information from the article. CodeCat (talk) 20:49, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

My sources are the books:

• Zigmas Zinkevičius. Lietuvių kalbos istorinė gramatika. T. I. Vilnius, 1980.
• Zigmas Zinkevičius. Lietuvių kalbos istorinė gramatika. T. II. Vilnius, 1981
• Zigmas Zinkevičius. Lietuvių kalbos istorija. T. I. – Vilnius, 1984.
• Zigmas Zinkevičius. Lietuvių kalbos istorija. T. II. – Vilnius, 1987.
• Zigmas Zinkevičius. Lietuvių kalbos dialektologija. – Vilnius, 1994.

Do you need I refer to the pages? This isn't WP:OR.--Ed1974LT (talk) 20:56, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

You haven't provided any specific passages that concern the matter. Does your source specifically address the dichotomy of o- and u-stems in Balto-Slavic, rather than in Lithuanian alone? In fact, does your source even accept Balto-Slavic at all? What you have provided here so far is WP:OR because you are drawing the conclusion that Zinkevičius's material discredits Hill's. Moreover, when two sources contradict each other, both alternatives are presented on Wiktionary. However, right now it's not at all clear that there even is a contradiction. As far as I can tell, Hill and Zinkevičius can both be right. CodeCat (talk) 21:08, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

At first, you have read Hill's article. He can say nothing about u-stem adjectives in other Baltic language because there are no u-stem adj. in Latvian and there are a few examples in Old Prussian, Hill comes to the conclusion only on the ground of Lithuanian. Z. Zinkevičius analyses this subject and comes to the conclusions as follow above, we can see the changes (j)o-stem → u-stem even in the written sources and in modern Lithuanian, so this is not Proto-Baltic phenomenon. We don'd need to accept Balto-Slavic to see development of u-stem adjectives in Lithuanian. Z. Zinkevičius is grave scholar of Lithuanian and Baltic languages, researches of u-stem evolution did lots of scholars and these researches are summarized in the books I mentioned, these books are a ground of Lithuanistics and Baltistics in the universities. And now you refer to an article of some Hill who didn't read history of Lithuanian u-stem adj.? Why do we need such opinion? We can have thousands of contradicting opinions. In WP, we need the authoritative ones only.--Ed1974LT (talk) 21:39, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

That's why we have WP:WEIGHT. And of course a source needs to accept Balto-Slavic, because this page is about Balto-Slavic. To use a source that rejects Balto-Slavic to provide evidence for the closeness of Baltic and Slavic is nonsense. If Zinkevičius is so widely known, then I'm sure you can find a source that tackles the u-stem problem. So far, you've only given sources covering Lithuanian, rather than Balto-Slavic as a whole. Does Zinkevičius say specifically that the rise of u-stems occurred independently in Lithuanian and Slavic? What does he say about the Slavic side? Does he specifically discredit Hill's theory, or is he silent about it? CodeCat (talk) 22:03, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

I've made a request for a third opinion on the matter. CodeCat (talk) 22:10, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

u-stem adjectives existed still in PIE. The problem is double reflexes of PIE. -os > Proto-Slavic -o and -u. Basing on Lithuanian status (-us = Slavic -u) instead of -as < PIE. -os, Hill comes to conclusion that sometimes -os became -us in Proto-Baltic, too.

Tell me in logical way, please:

How can it be in Proto-Baltic (3000 y. ago) when we can see Lithuanian stačias, bjauras, stipras were transformed to u-stem paradigm in last 2-3 hundreds years?--Ed1974LT (talk) 22:39, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

The point is still that you haven't actually given any sources specifically addressing Hill's point. WP:VNT. It's not enough that you yourself have poked a hole in Hill's theory, there has to be a reliable source that does so. Until then, this seems like WP:OR and WP:SYNTH to me. CodeCat (talk) 22:45, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Do you need I find a sentence: "According X, Hill's theory is wrong?" Just answer to the question above. This is not my opinion, this is researches of the scholars. We don't need the words "his/ her theory is wrong" to show opposite analysis of authoritative linguists.--Ed1974LT (talk) 22:57, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

What do you mean by "show"? Again, if you are trying to demonstrate a conclusion yourself, that's WP:OR. You need to stick with what the sources say. CodeCat (talk) 23:03, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

And we don't discuss about Proto-Baltio-Slavic languages in general here. This is question about -os > Proto -Baltic -us only, about the only one case that is wrong.--Ed1974LT (talk) 23:08, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm just going to wait for a third opinion. CodeCat (talk) 23:15, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

O.K. I have the sources. In the sources of Z. Zinkevičius is said, that lots of Lithuanian -as > -us turn in last 2-3 hundredsincluding stačias > status which is Hill's argument for -as > us in Proto-Baltic. What do you mean by "you are trying to demonstrate a conclusion yourself" and by "You need to stick with what the sources say"? I'm repeating what is in my sources.--Ed1974LT (talk) 23:20, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Doubtful theory as a faithful fact on WP

"Raising of stressed *o to *u in a final syllable". In the article, doubtful theory like a true thing is presented. There are lots of clear evidences, e. g. PIE. r, l, m, n, > Proto-Baltic, Proto-Slavic *ir, *il, *im, *in (*ur, *ul,*un, *um). But stressed PIE. *o > Proto-Baltic > *u is highly weak conclusion and it isn't recognized as a true fact in the linguists' debates.

1. As Z. Zinkevičius writes, U-stem adjectives (bjaur-as > bjaur-us) became productive in the last times.
2. There are no faithful arguments in proof of the reason. The most hopeful is o-stem adjectives shifted to u-stem to avoid coincidence of noun and adjective: Lith. noun labas 'wealth' : adjective labas 'good'. P. Vanags claims the same, he recognize correlation of stressed o > u and unstressed o > o being a weak and doubtful thing, u-stem adjectives vs. o-stem nouns seem to be a morphological differentiation of noun and adjective. Everyone can read it on P. Vanags's article On the history of Baltic u-stem adjectives.--Ed1974LT (talk) 18:01, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Third opinion

I have been asked to provide a third opinion. I'm honored, but I'm not sure if I'm the right person, since I know practically nothing about Baltic languages (except for a question about Lithuanian vocative, which may have earned me the request). I am certain that there are others more qualified than me on Wikipedia, but I'll try my best.

I would boil down the main question this discussion revolves around as: Should the "Two laws of final syllables in the common prehistory of Baltic and Slavonic" be presented in the article as undisputed?

To this, our policies have a clear answer: If there is no reliable source that says the Two Laws are disputed, they we can't claim that they are disputed, in other words, we must treat them as undisputed.

That said, I want to take into account the intention of Ed1974LT, who disagrees with the Two Laws. One can boil down Ed's line of argument to a series of logical premises and conclusions. The policy WP:OR does not allow logical conclusions, but it does allow Routine calculations. Since I don't know why simple logic is not explicitly allowed, I will now consider a syllogism a form of a routine calculation.

The parts of Ed's argument are:

1. Premise: If a change has happened to Proto-Balto-Slavic, must be visible in Proto-Baltic. (23:08, 7 August)
2. Premise: The Two Laws state that -os > -us for Proto-Balto-Slavic
3. Therefore, the Two Laws claim that original -os > -us in Proto-Baltic.
4. Alternative wording of above conclusion: The Two Laws state that a change occured in Proto-Baltic (3000 y. ago) (22:39, 7 August)
5. Premise: Lithuanian stačias, bjauras, stipras transformed to u-stem paradigm in last 2-3 hundreds years (22:39, 7 August)
6. Premise: If a change occured in Proto-Baltic then the transformation could not have happened in Lithuanian (22:39, 7 August)
7. Therefore, the Two Laws are in contradiction to what happened.

To Ed, it seems that the above is simple logic. However, at least one step appears to be not as clear cut, as shown by CodeCat's assertion that "Hill and Zinkevičius can both be right". Obviously, judging this requires more knowledge in the area than I have, so I can neither confirm nor refute Ed's chain of argument.

Instead, I have to fall back to the following consideration: This line of argument is at least easy enough to occur to scholars of the topic. The Two laws of final syllables in the common prehistory of Baltic and Slavonic were first presented in 2009 in what appears to be, judging by List of linguistics conferences#International, the international conference on historical linguistics. So they had enough visibility and scholars had enough time for any criticism to be published. Since that apparently hasn't happened, I conclude that the line of argument isn't as simple as Ed makes it out, and the Two Laws must remain as undisputed in this article. — Sebastian 21:19, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

References

Shared vocabulary

We only get three words in the shared vocabulary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.141.100.176 (talk) 11:47, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Careful

The claim that Baltic is especially close to Slavonic needs careful study. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.141.100.176 (talk) 11:48, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't speak a word of Slav or Baltic and have no political reason for denying the alleged close relationship between the two.

I want linguistic evidence only. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.141.100.176 (talk) 11:57, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Saying "One particularly innovative dialect", about Slavonic, is an admission that there is no close relationship between the two. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.44.96.242 (talk) 12:49, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

You can read artickle why its absurd to group baltic and slavic languages in one: BALTO-SLAVIC OR BALTIC AND SLAVIC? http://www.lituanus.org/1967/67_2_01Klimas.html unfortunetly, most linguists here do not want to discuse it. Part of science is trying to disprove your point, but choosing few common words and sounds doesnt make it right. In fact there are plenty contradictions, but almost no one cares to discuss them, so biggest group wins - even on false facts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Janncis (talk • contribs) 10:14, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

As I have been contacted by the user above via email, let me just add this: Wikipedia is not about discussing things (this should be done by the linguists in their academic circles, resulting in a paper which can then be published and discussed further, but Wikipedia is not the place for it). Wikipedia is but a mirror of what reliable sources have to say about a topic. Lectonar (talk) 10:16, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Virtually all linguists agree that Baltic and Slavic languages are closed together. Most of them argue for a Balto-Slavic branch. This is not to say, however, that the majority of scholars believes without reserve in the 19th century conception of Balto-Slavic as a uniform language. Most scholars would probably agree with a more dynamic dialectological model involving internal divergences and therefore requiring a more fine-grained description. Azerty82 (talk) 23:58, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

You always say this but you never show any evidence. That's not funny.

Baltic languages are a mixture of Romance and Germanic languages. Check words for numbers from 1 to 10. 94.3.122.193 (talk) 20:07, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

They never show any evidence, I guess it's more geopolitical than linguistic branch. 94.3.122.193 (talk) 20:05, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Sounds

The number of phonetic features is variously said to be 9, 10 and 12. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.141.100.176 (talk) 11:51, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Edit-warring

To the IP editor: The addition of the label "hypothetical" is unnecessary and potentially misleading. Every linguistic relationship is based on hypotheses, except for rare cases where the the evolution from a common source is documented (such as the emergence of the Romance languages from Latin, or the Indo-Aryan languages from Sanskrit). Baltic is also "hypothetical", since there is no documented source from which the East and West Baltic languages have emerged, so why not add it there too?

The politicizing of the topic is not helpful either ("Russian politics"[16]). It betrays a deplorable unfamiliarity with the topic. Our sources which support the Balto-Slavic unity are written by American, British, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, and German scholars. What on earth has this to do with politics? –Austronesier (talk) 18:03, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Reading your text makes you feel you have a political, rather than a linguistic goal. You list a lot of countries, but not a single citation to a scholar. I am sorry if it does not sound very polite, but your “sources” are probably sitting somewhere in Kremlin or Sejm, because they desperately want the Balto-Slavic linkage and we all know why. The British have always been very supportive of the Russian influence in the Baltics, so linking them linguistically is only serving their political agenda. Had there been a natural linguistic connection, the Slavic people (Russians and Poles) would learn the Baltic languages with ease and would be promoting them. Instead we see the opposite. So making claims like these, which always results in political gain for the Polish and Russian governments, is very political. Everybody but Wikipedia is aware of this.

Secondly, saying it is a hypothetical branch provides a more accurate and less political description.

You list a lot of countries and use exquisite British English but don’t back your statements with a singe piece of evidence. And I can tell you why – you know that the majority of the scholars making these hypotheses are either Polish, Russian or German. So once again, it is more of a geopolitical linkage than a linguistic one.

If the article in the present form wasn’t political it WOULD contain words like “hypothetical” and strong and balanced counter arguments by a number of scholars who do not agree with the Balto-Slavic grouping and show significant amount of evidence to prove it. You are censoring this information, which is again political. Your sentences in this article are structured in a way to shape and form an opinion that the Balto-Slavic grouping is widely accepted, which isn’t the case.

You also disproportionately distance the Baltic languages in the pages where you describe the Slavic languages and disproportionately draw similarities between the two in the pages about the Baltic languages. This is again very political and unacceptable.

The Baltic languages have only adapted some orthography used by some Slavic languages and as a result of a very extensive contact through centuries-long occupations now have a few words in common. This unnatural Slavicization does not necessarily mean they are part of the same branch. Has anyone conducted any studies to show the damages to the Baltic languages over the 500 years of Polish and Russian rule? No, because it’s politically incorrect to favour a tiny culture over big and mighty politics.

There are more key grammatical structures and words shared between the Greek, Germanic and Romance languages and the Baltic languages than between the Baltic and Slavic, but due to political reasons and some borrowed orthography it’s easy to deny it.

All it takes to unmask this great “Balto-Slavic” deception is numbers. Check the words for numbers from 1-10 in Baltic languages, then compare them to Germanic and Romances (Spanish, French and Italian) and then also compare them to Slavic languages. Then tell me what percentage of it is Slavic.

Unfortunately, the Baltic republics are too small and too weak to lobby for their identity so it gets bulldozed under the Slavic languages in encyclopaedias like this one quite frequently.

Actually all it takes to uncover this big political lie is the Baltic word for number “one”. Compare that with the above languages and tell me how Slavic the Baltic languages are.

I maintain that the way this article has been written is very political, disproportionate and lacks evidence. 94.3.122.193 (talk) 19:55, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Please read the article from top to bottom, and don't skip the references to works by Mallory & Adam, Clarckson, Beekes, Kapovic, Young, Kortlandt, Andersen, Derksen, Olander, Kim, Hill. These works will help you to base your arguments on actual historical-comparative linguistic scholarship, and not wacky conspiracy theories. Cheers! –Austronesier (talk) 20:20, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Most of these are generic reviews of previous literature and the academic background of these authors is mostly Slavonic studies, so they are not going to show impartiality. You have cited those who accept the branch, why don't you have a more balanced argument and show the views of other scholars who do not agree with this theory? Why are you censoring their works?

The authors you cited accept it is a hypothetical branch, why would you refuse to use the word "hypothetical"? 94.3.122.193 (talk) 21:09, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

...the academic background of these authors is mostly Slavonic studies – No. –Austronesier (talk) 17:37, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

Calling the grouping hypothetical

I have heard from some that calling Balto-Slavic a hypothesis is ‘not worth mentioning’ because it is self-evident. Very well. In that case, why mention in the Italo-Celtic article that it's a ‘hypothetical grouping’ then, it's self-evident, isn’t it? Can we stop with the double standards for once and apply the same principle to all the articles? — Preceding unsigned comment added by SeriousThinker (talk • contribs) 14:43, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

Balto-Slavic is not "self-evident" and no one has said so. It is based on a large corpus of evidence (i.e. exclusively shared innovations) that is convincing enough for most scholars in the mainstream of Indo-European historical-comparative linguistics. You cannot compare the acceptance of Italo-Celtic to that of Balto-Slavic: by applying the same standard to both, most comprehensive handbooks of Indo-European linguistics clearly arrive at different assessments:

• Fortson (2004), Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction:
  • Balto-Slavic: "The notion of a single Balto-Slavic speech community has been controversial in some circles, in part because of political tensions. But all major Indo-Europeanists are agreed that Baltic and slavic deserve to be grouped together, though some dispute remains about the exact degree and nature of their affinity (p. 364)."
  • Italo-Celtic: "These shared features have led many Indo-Europeanists to posit an "Italo-Celtic" subgroup or dialect area of Indo-European. However, the hypothesis of an Italo-Celtic unity has never gained universal approval (p. 247)."

• Beekes (2011), Comparative Indo-European Linguistics:
  • Balto-Slavic: "The Baltic and the Slavic languages were originally one language and so form one group (p.22)." [...] "The supposed unity of the Balto-Slavic group is often disputed, but it is really above all doubt. Both language groups share a host of developments in common, es pecially with respect to the accent (p. 31)."
  • Italo-Celtic: "The Italo-Celtic unity is a much more difficult one to prove. In any case, the basis for such a supposition are only a few sound changes and perhaps also a morphological (i.e. form) development (p. 31)."

• Mallory-Adams (2006) The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World:
  • "There are a number of other proposed relationships. Some argue that similarities between Greek and Armenian are such that there was a common Graeco-Armenian, while Italo-Celtic has been another long suggested and just as frequently rejected proposition. In both of these cases, we do not require a proto-language between Proto-Indo-European and the individual languages as we do with Indo-Iranian, and so the case for these other sets is simply not as strong as it is for Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic (p. 78, emphasis added)."

• Klein et al. (2017–2018), Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics:
  • "Although some groups seem to be presently beyond doubt (e.g. Balto-Slavic), some are still hotly disputed (e.g. Italo-Celtic) (p. 23)."
  • "That Indic and Iranian together constitute an Indo-Iranian clade has not been seriously questioned; the languages share more than enough striking innovations to show that they developed as a single language for some time after losing touch with the ancestors of other surviving IE languages. Though Baltic and Slavic are not so closely related, the evidence for a Balto-Slavic clade likewise seems secure [...] The existence of an Italo-Celtic clade has also been suspected, but it is much harder to validate and remains problematic (p. 63)."
  • "However, unlike some other Indo-European subgroups such as Indo-Iranian or Balto-Slavic, the existence of Italo-Celtic has never reached the status of established fact. (p. 2030)."

• Kapovic (2016), The Indo-European Languages:
  • "The ten principal IE branches are as follows. [...] 4. Italic [...] 5. Celtic [...] 9. Balto-Slavic... (p. 4–5)."

To some up, mainstream assessment arrives at different conclusions about the validity of Balto-Slavic and Italo-Celtic. And of course, Wikipedia will reflect this. In Wikipedia, all information is considered with WP:due weight. –Austronesier (talk) 16:37, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

More modern-day high-quality sources:

• Weiss (2022), "Italo-Celtic", in T. Olander (ed.), The Indo-European Language Family: A Phylogenetic Perspective
  • "It would be fair to say that Italo-Celtic is more debatable than any other higher order subgrouping, certainly much more so than Balto-Slavic."

• Pronk (2022), "Balto-Slavic", in T. Olander (ed.), The Indo-European Language Family: A Phylogenetic Perspective
  • "Throughout the twentieth century, the matter remained controversial [...] During the last quarter of a century, the communis opinio appears to have moved firmly in favour of the idea that there was indeed a period of shared innovations between Baltic and Slavic directly following the disintegration of the Proto-Indo-European parent language (p. 269) [...] All linguistic evidence points to a Balto-Slavic proto-language that must have existed for a significant period after the disintegration of Proto-Indo-European (p. 285).

• Villanueva Svensson (2023), The Rise of Acuteness in Balto-Slavic:
  • I regard Balto-Slavic unity as completely certain [...] The best characterization of the Balto-Slavic question I can think of is that it was an important 20th century topic that is no longer current in the 21st century (recent, detailed defenses of an anti-Balto-Slavic position are indeed nonexistent). In my view, the cumulative evidence in favor of Balto-Slavic unity is simply overwhelming (p. 5).

This has direct bearings for the over-detailed section "Criticism" that dwells on points that have become long settled in the last decades. Giving too much space to a position that is virtually non-existent among present-day mainstream scholars with an expertise in Indo-European linguistics (including those specialized in Balto-Slavic linguistics, Baltic linguistics or Slavic linguistics) violates WP:UNDUE and WP:NPOV. I invite all editors with a genuine (not ideologically driven) interest in historical linguistics to tackle this problem. –Austronesier (talk) 21:18, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree; considering the sources that are presented above, the length of § Criticism constitutes a violation of WP:UNDUE. Today, there is a general consensus among academic specialists of Indo-European linguistics, in classifying the Baltic and Slavic languages under a single branch. The article should reflect proportionately, and without editorial bias, the views of present-day mainstream scholars with expertise in the topic; thus, the section requires significant trimming. An alternative option would be to remove it altogether, and add a summary of it under § Historical dispute. Demetrios1993 (talk) 04:44, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

The best guidance for how much space we want give to a spent hypothesis (such as Meillet's rejection of the Balto-Slavic unity) is to follow the example of the high-quality sources listed above. A nice case in point is Daniel Petit's chapter "114. Balto-Slavic"[17] in the Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics (the De Gruyter site erroneously lists Rüdiger Schmitt as author). Of ~10-page length, it devotes a two-page section "Balto-Slavic divergences" to what had been presented in the past as counterevidence for the unity of Balto-Slavic, only to discard it as inconclusive ("None of these features seriously precludes the reconstruction of a Balto-Slavic stage.", "Such divergences must, of course, not be overestimated. It would be unwise to use them as pieces of evidence against the reconstruction of a Balto-Slavic common proto-stage."). And needless to say, his exposition of the historical material comes after the section that presents the common features of Balto-Slavic.

Tijmen Pronk's chapter about Balto-Slavic[18] (cited above) does not even waste a half-paragraph to the historical debate on a total of 19 pages.

If we follow Pronk's example, we can completely discard the section criticism; if we model our article after Petit, the section § Historical dispute needs to be moved down and expanded with a discussion of the core arguments that were relevant in the historical debate. In either case, § Criticism should be TNT-ed, with all its fluffy non-arguments (such as the commentary on Trautmann's dictionary) that betray an egregious lack of understanding of historical-comparative linguistics. –Austronesier (talk) 19:42, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

I went through Petit's (2018) and Pronk's (2022) chapters; indeed, they could, and should be used as guidance in this regard, since they are among the most recent reliable sources focusing on the topic, and provide a decent historical overview. Thus, removing § Criticism altogether, moving § Historical dispute under § Shared vocabulary, and expanding it with information from the two aforementioned sources, seems like a reasonable approach. Though, i am reserved as to whether we should include in detail all 14 divergences that are attributed to Erhart and Pohl; in addition to what you noted above, Petit (2018) also stated – among other things – that these divergences "are obviously inconclusive, since they can be accounted for by assuming recent innovations on one side or on both sides." The only one that is significant and worthy of some expansion, is "the difference of ablaut in reflexes of the same designation"; per what he wrote on page 1968. Demetrios1993 (talk) 02:57, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

More than a month has passed since the above proposals were made, without any counterargument(s). Austronesier, if you also agree, you can go ahead and make the aforementioned changes. Specifically, to remove § Criticism altogether, move § Historical dispute where the former was (under § Shared vocabulary), and expand it with information from the chapters of Petit (2018) and Pronk (2022); however, the extent and details of what is to be included, still remain to be decided. Ideally, we shouldn't make any changes until we also have the aforementioned summary; though, personally I don't mind moving forward with the removals either. Demetrios1993 (talk) 14:20, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

The file "Slavic_languages_tree.svg" used in the article is inaccurate

The file in question is claimed to be a derivative of the file "IndoEuropeanTree.svg", however, that file clearly shows that Ukrainian, Rusyn and Belarusian are descended from the dead Ruthenian language, which is in turn descended from Old East Slavic. The "Slavic_languages_tree.svg" file shows that Russian, Ukrainian, Rusyn and Belarusian are descended directly from Old East Slavic, parallel to the "Old Ruthenian Language", which is shown as dead and without no descendants - this goes against both the original file of which it is derivative of, and it also goes against the contemprorary understanding of the classification Slavic languages.

I suggest a new file be made to match the "IndoEuropeanTree.svg" file closely. Mnohohrishnyi (talk) 09:18, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Actually, someone modified the file to change this. If you check the file history. The first version was correct. Mellk (talk) 09:58, 13 April 2023 (UTC)