Re: North Slavic (fi: tolkien?)

Hello,

> > Actually Slavicists use 'North Slavic' to mean
> > 'East and West but not South Slavic'.  Sorry!
[...]

> And by the way, I'm really not so sure how widely accepted
> this usage is.
Um., I don't know, I'm not explicitly a Slavicist (which importantly
means I haven't taken a special course in Slavic philology), but I think
it's probably rather normal over here. Even though it is true...

> It strikes me as slightly pointless, anyway; it's
> like using the
> term "South Germanic" for anything West or East Germanic but
> explicitly nót North Germanic.
...that one doesn't need the term really often. However, North Slavic is
not an exactly empty notion - after all, there are the eight South
Slavic morphological innovations not touching North Slavic (sorry, I
can't remember all of them!). I mean, it can have its uses - but
admittedly not very frequent ones.

'South Germanic', on the other hand, would be a rather pointless term
indeed since I can't remember offhand a single feature characteristic of
West and East but *not* North (there's nothing surpising in this, since
what East Germanic we have comes probably from Scandinavia ultimately).
Corrections are welcome, of course!

If anyone's wondering, I'm still here, only it's that I'm a couple
thousand of messages behind - exams you know...

Pavel
--
Pavel Iosad               pavel_iosad@mail.ru

Nid byd, byd heb wybodaeth
                 --Welsh saying