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The Circle That Won't Come Full: Two Potential Isoglosses in the Circum

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The Circle That Won't Come Full: Two Potential Isoglosses in the Circum 8 The Circle That Won’t Come Full: Two Potential Isoglosses in the Circum-Baltic Area Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm 1The Circum-Baltic languages – a coastal contact-superposition zone in the European periphery 1.1 Introducing the Circum-Baltic languages Although humans have inhabited the region around the Baltic Sea at least since the end of the last glacial era, our knowledge about the languages spoken in the area covers a much shorter time span. In historical times, this area was mainly a meeting-place of languages from two linguistic stocks: Indo-European (Baltic, Germanic and Slavic languages) and Uralic/Finno-Ugric (Finnic and Saami). Archaeologists, geneticists and linguists claim to trace back the two language stocks in the area to at least the second millennium BC, and suggest various competing theories on which one was the first and where. In addition, there are three ‘exotic’ languages that have all been used in the area for a considerable time: the Indo-Aryan language(s) Romani, spoken all over the Circum-Baltic area in different varieties, and the Turkic languages Tatar and Karaim. Which languages should count as Circum-Baltic (CB) languages (the term launched in Dahl and Koptjevskaja-Tamm, 1992, and further developed in Dahl and Koptjevskaja-Tamm, 2001) is, of course, open to discussion, for several reasons, the main one being the geographical delineation of the area. In Dahl and Koptjevskaja-Tamm (2001: xvi–xx), we include as CB languages those in Figure 8.1 (see also Map 8.1). The list in Figure 8.1 is simplified in several respects. First, it does not contain extinct languages – for example, Polabian (Slavic), Old Prussian, Jatvingian, Curonian and Galindian (Baltic). In addition, it more or less ignores dialectal variations, which in some cases make the distinction between languages and dialects particularly troublesome. Thus, Northern and Southern Estonian are sometimes considered to be two different 182 Y. Matras et al. (eds.), Linguistic Areas © Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2006 Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm 183 languages (Estonian language, eesti keel versus Võru language, võro kiil); the High Latvian dialect spoken in the eastern part of Latvia is sometimes referred to as the ‘Latgalian language’; and Norwegian has two written languages, Bokmål (based on Norwegianized Danish) and Nynorsk (based on Norwegian dialects). The list above, however, treats the different Saami Indo-European Germanic West: High German, Low German, Yiddish North: Danish, Swedish, Dalecarlian, Norwegian Baltic: Latvian, Lithuanian Slavic West: Polish, Kashubian East: Belarusian, Russian, Ukrainian Indo-Aryan: Romani Finno-Ugric Finnic: Estonian, Finnish, Ingrian, Karelian, Ludian, Olonetsian, Veps Saami: Southern S., Ume S., Pite S., Lule S., Northern S., Inari S., Skolt S. Turkic: Karaim, Tatar Figure 8.1 Circum-Baltic languages Northern Saami Inari Skolt Saami Saami Lule Saami Pite Saami Ume Saami Karelian Southern Saami Finnish Ludian Dalecarlian Olonetsian Veps Norwegian Swedish Ingrian Estonian Votian Livonian Russian Latvian Danish Lithuanian Northern Karaim Frisian Kashubian Low Belarusian German Polish High German Map 8.1 The Circum-Baltic languages [non-territorial languages (Romani, Yiddish, Tatar) not shown] 184 The Circum-Baltic Area varieties as distinct languages. ‘Dalecarlian’ (egentligt dalmål) refers to the highly conservative Scandinavian vernaculars that are spoken in the Swedish province of Dalarna (Dalecarlia) and are not comprehensible to speakers of Standard Swedish. We have chosen to treat these as a separate language (or, perhaps, even as a language chain), breaking with the tradi- tion of counting them as the ‘highly deviating variants’ of the Eastern Swedish dialects. Both extinct varieties and dialectal variation are, of course, crucial for the study of areal phenomena. The ethnic groups and the languages in the CB area have been involved in various kinds of contact, from more local to those stretching over large territories. Since time immemorial, the area itself has been divided and re-divided constantly among different spheres of influence. Thus, the period AD 800–1000 meant expansive activities of the Scandinavian Vikings and the emergence of the Scandinavian, Polish and Russian states, each with its own sphere of dominance. The period AD 1100–1500 saw Denmark’s expansion, the crusades and the establishment of the Teutonic Order states in Northern Baltikum, dominance of the Hanseatic leagues, and expansion of the Polish and the Lithuanian states, later of the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth. After that the area went on to be shared and re-shared among powers such as Sweden, the Polish–Lithuanian Common- wealth, Prussia (later Germany) and Russia (later the Soviet Union). Each of the dominant powers brought with it a new prestige language (Danish, Low German, the Eastern Slavic variety used in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Swedish, Polish, German and Russian), which expanded over a large area and influenced the local languages. Indirectly, the spread of prestige languages entailed convergence among the local vernaculars themselves. The CB zone has also been divided and re-divided among the three main religions in the area – Catholicism, Lutheranism and Greek Orthodoxy. The ‘deviating’ religions, Judaism and the ‘Old Faith’, have played a highly important role in the preservation of Karaim and Yiddish, as well as Russian ‘Old Believers’ dialects in the CB area. More or less local contacts among particular ethnic groups and languages or language groups in the area are numerous and diverse. One contact-intensive zone is, for example, the territory where Latvian, Livonian and Estonian are spoken (Stolz, 1991). Thus, a strong Finnish substratum is generally recognized in Latvian, especially in its north- eastern dialects (Tamian), covering the area originally inhabited by Livonians. Livonian itself is at present spoken by only a few dozen speakers and is largely influenced by Latvian. Northern Russian has a number of features generally attributed to the Finnic substratum and, primarily, to contacts with the smaller Finnic languages (Ingrian, Karelian, Ludian, Veps and Votian). These languages themselves are now on the verge of extinction or, in the case of Karelian, are mainly used as one part Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm 185 of bilingual mixed codes (Sarhimaa, 1999). Swedish in Finland and Estonia is (or was) spoken in the Finnic area; there are various Slavic varieties spoken in the Baltic area. Given all this, it is justified to expect an abundance of contact phenomena in the CB languages. There is a relatively old tradition of studying linguistic contacts around the Baltic Sea by looking at loan words. The area was also among the first to receive the newly-coined label ‘Sprachbund’, applied to it by R. Jakobson (1931). Starting primarily from the 1970s, there has been an intensive hunt for isoglosses in the CB area, with the resulting rich flora of partly overlapping proposed Sprachbünde, primarily in the two above-mentioned main hotbeds of areal phenomena (Koptjevskaja-Tamm and Wälchli, 2001). Thus, the Latvian–Livonian–Estonian zone stretching in different directions over the Baltikum and further constitutes the core in what has been termed the ‘Peipus-Bund’ (Décsy, 1973), the ‘Baltischer Sprachbund’ (Haarmann, 1970, 1976) and the ‘Convergence zone in the Baltikum’ (Stolz, 1991; see also Falkenhahn, 1963). The Eastern Finnic– Northwestern Russian(–Baltic) zone forms the core in Matthiassen’s (1985a, 1985b) ‘Eastern Baltic Sprachbund’ and in Sarhimaa’s (1999) ‘Karelian Sprachbund’. In addition, the CB area partially overlaps with two other suggested convergence zones including Scandinavian–Celtic–Northern Finnic– Saami – the ‘Wikinger-Bund’ (Haarmann, 1976), and Polish–Kashubian– Belarusan–Ukrainian–Lithuanian – the ‘Rokytno-Bund’ (Haarmann, 1976), or the ‘Baltic–Slavic contact area’ (Wiemer, 2004; see also Falkenhahn, 1963). The latest, and probably most ambitious, contribution to the field are the two volumes by Dahl and Koptjevskaja-Tamm (2001) that contain numerous papers on relations among the Circum-Baltic languages. In the concluding chapter in their book, Koptjevskaja-Tamm and Wälchli look at a large number of potential areal features in the CB area, at both the micro-level – by giving a nuanced and detailed analysis of these phenomena – and at the macro-level – by plotting the same phenomena against a general cross-linguistic background. In the latter, we differentiate between global and European perspectives. Several important conclusions follow from this analysis: (1) the highest concentration of typologically unusual areal properties is found in the eastern part of the CB; (2) the CB region forms a border zone between the Central Eurasian languages in the East and the Standard Average European languages in the West; and (3) the isoglosses pick up different subsets of the languages, in many cases also extending outside the CB area proper. In the next section we shall look at some examples illustrating these gener- alizations (see also Table 8.1). 186 Table 8.1 Some areal phenomena in the CB area PhenomenonLanguagesPossible Typological status primarily source(s) involved Globally Europe 1. Case Finnic, In embryo Probably unusual, alternation for Baltic, attested in Indo- but not unique (cf. marking total Eastern European; Basque, French) versus partial and common objects/ Western innovation subjects Slavic in the CB area with several layers of influence (Baltic → Finnic
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