OT (?) Balkan Sprachbund (was: Relative clauses)
From: | Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> |
Date: | Wednesday, June 28, 2006, 18:09 |
Eldin Raigmore wrote:
> Naturally. Modern Greek is in that [Balkan] Sprachbund, but before the
> fall of the
> Roman Empire that Sprachbund wouldn't have existed, at least not in its
> present form.
>
An interesting question: What is really known about the ethnic makeup of the
Balkans prior to the Slavic influx-- aside from a few vague names
"Dalmatians, Illyrians, Dacians, Macedonians" et al.-- and, I gather, some
inscriptions difficult to interpret. (The Romanians and the occasional
Albanian on Cybalist get very excited about these questions :-)) ). Were
even the Albanians indigenous to the area, or later arrivals (late Roman
period, or even later, Byzantine?).
Apparently the pre-Slavic population of Bulgaria was Turkic (Central Asian?)
in origin (leftovers from the Hunnic invasions? Who was there before that?).
One statement in Toynbee really surprised me (assuming he's correct)-- viz.,
that the present-day population of Greece is something like 50% Slavic in
origin. (There was, according to him, a period when Greece or at least the
Peloponnese, became severely depopulated; Slavic immigrants moved in.) I
wonder if modern DNA analysis bears this out in any way?
In any case the Slavic movement into the entire area must have been massive,
no?
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