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Georg Holzer PROTO-SLAVIC

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Georg Holzer PROTO-SLAVIC Georg Holzer PROTO-SLAVIC: HISTORICAL SETTING AND LINGUISTIC RECONSTRUCTION THE ORIGIN OF SLAVIC Slavic is a language or rather a family of languagcs and dialects of Indo-European origin. The theoretical foundation for this claim is the idea that a language called Proto-Indo-European by linguists that was in use thousands of years ago, under went various changes in different parts of the territory in which it was spoken, the result of which were various new languages. '1'hese descendants of Proto- Indo-European, called Indo-European languages, replaced their ancestor, but in turn split up and became protolanguages for the next generation of languages, and so on. Linguistic proliferation is driven by language change. Languages change con- tinuously, albeit slowly and therefore imperceptibly, with the notable exception of vocabulary, some parts of which may undergo rapid and abrupt changes. The causes of language change are poorly understood, again, with the exception of change in vocabulary. One reason might be that a generation of children does not manage to reproduce their parents' language in all details of grammar and pronunciation. However, the question of why languages change is not that important for historical linguistics. Historical linguists are used to studying lan- guage changes without caring much about their reasons. Instead, they are con- cerned with when and where a given language change occurred. Each change has its time and its area, but areas of various language changes may overlap. In fact, language change is a matter of areas rather than of single languages (and their so-called I Overlapping areas of various changes form a structure called a dialect con- tinuum. The early Indo-European languages and dialects were arranged in a dialect continuum as well.z In a dialect continuum languages or dialects spoken in proximity to each other are more similar to each other (i.e., separated by a smaller number of changes) than languages spoken at greater distance from * I 1 For the mechanism of linguistic proliferation, see G. Holzer, Das ErschUqls'enunbe- legterSprachen. Zu den theoretischen Grundlagen der genetischen Ltregufstik?(Frankfurt a. M. :Peter Lang, 1996), pp. 13-48. 2 For a model of the early Indo-European dialect continuum, see H.H.Hock, Principles ; of Historical /?M?:'c? 2nd ed. (Berlin/New York; Mouton/De Gruyter, 1991), p. 455. 50 each other. As a consequence, similarity of related languages can be taken as a measure of how close were from each other the areas in which the languages in question developed. For example, if one examines the similarity of Slavic to var- ious other Indo-European languages, it becomes clear that it must have devel- oped in close contact with, as well as in the vicinity of, Germanic, Baltic, Iranian, and Thracian. Particularly relevant in this context is the number' of similarities between Slavic and Baltic. Thus, the early Indo-European dialect continuum can be regarded as a jigsaw puzzle, in which Slavic fits into position between the areas in which Germanic, Baltic, Iranian, and Thracian have developed. This provides a relative location for the Urheimat or proto-homeland of the Slavic language family. In terms of absolute location, it may match the outer slopes of the northeastern range of the Carpathian Mountains, for Galicia has been identified as the region in which the oldest river names are of Slavic origin.3 In addition, it can be shown that the bor- rowing of geographic names between Slavic on the one hand and Baltic and Finnic on the other began earlier than that between Slavic and other non-Slavic languages of the Balkans and of Western Europe.4 This too indicates that Slavic originated rather in the north. The extension of Slavic northwards into the habitats of Baltic and Finnic peo- ples and (perhaps as early as the fifth century A. D.) southwards to the left bank of the Lower Danube destroyed the dialect continuum by introducing clear-cut language borders, and thus emancipated Slavic from being -just the southern- most fringe of the Baltic-Slavic continuum of dialects, culture, and vague ethnic- ity.' By the late 500s, Slavdom finally expanded westwards to the banks of the Elbe, Saale, and Enns rivers, including the shores of the Baltic sea and the Balkan Peninsula. In the course of this expansion Slavic dialects merged into a uniform language for which I reserve the name 'Proto-Slavic,' because it is the last com- mon ancestral form of all Slavic languages and dialects. Thus, Proto-Slavic was spoken about 600 A. D., and it was spoken all over the huge territory that has been Slavic since the expansion. The language in existence before that ex- pansion must therefore be called `Pre-Proto-Slavic.'? As Johanna Nichols claims, the expansion of Slavdom in the early Middle Ages was not only a matter of demographic spread. The language spread by itself as well. Since in their physical anthropology the various modern Slavic popu- lations resemble their respective nearby non-Slavic neighbors more than all Slavs resemble each other, there is no reason to assume the Slavic expan- ................................,.. 3 J. Lldalph, ,Studien zu slavischen Gewassc·rnamen und Gewlisserbezeichnungen (Heidelberg:Winter, 1979), pp. 619-623. 4 G. Holzer, 'Urslavisch und Baltisch,' Wiener ,Slavistischesjahrbuch 44 (1998), pp, 27-56, here pp. 50-53. 5 G. Holzer,'I_Jrslavisch und Baltisch,'p. 33 (with references) and p. 51. 6 G. Holzer, 'Die Einheitiichkeit des Slavischenum 600 n. Chr. und ihr Zerfall,' Wiener Slavi.,;tische.,;Jahrl.7uch41 (1995), pp. 55-89. .
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