Re: Slovanik, my new romlang

Quoting Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@...>:

>  --- "Thomas R. Wier" wrote:
>
> > > Historical plausibility?
> > > We all know, that the Slavs have never even been near the borders of
> the
> > > Roman Empire;
> >
> > Not so:  the Crimea was an Imperial vassal state for centuries,
> > all the way well into the Byzantine period.  It is almost certain
> > that slavic tribes also inhabited parts of the Empire itself,
> > although not in great numbers until well after Constantine the
> > Great.
>
> That's interesting! Do you know where exactly? Maybe that could help me
> finding a more exact location for my Slavo-Romans.
(See below)

> > According to Mallory, who quotes the Ukrainian archaeologist
> > Vladimir Baran, the geographical center of the extensive Slavic
> > "urheimat" was considerably to the south and east of Poland,
> > somewhere in the western Ukraine, although it is true that Slavs
> > (more specifically: Balts) inhabited the region immediately to
> > the east of Oder.
>
> Perhaps. I'm not an expert in this field. About which period is he
> speaking?
Actually, he himself did not make that claim; I was extrapolating
that from his claim.  He was referring specifically to the
"historically attested peoples of the sixth to seventh centuries
AD and assigns them to the Prague-Penkov-Kolochina complex that
inhabited a very broad area from the Elbe on the West to the Dnieper
on the East" (_In Search of the Indo-Europeans_, 78).  I should
probably clarify that there is essentially no concensus on exactly
where the Slavic Urheimat should be located, although there is broad
agreement on such claims as they must have existed near the Balts
for a protracted length of time.  (This of course begs the question
of the original extent of Baltic occupation, which most believe was
far more extensive in this period than today.)

But getting back to your question, other scholars claim that the
Slavs existed much further South.  The Chernyakovo Culture, which
encompassed most of modern day Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania is
claimed by some to have been inhabited by Slavs, Goths and Iranian
speaking peoples (some of the latter of which still exist there!),
and if so, that would perhaps place some of them inside the
boundaries of the Empire as established by Trajan.  But who exactly
believes this typically depends on which country you're working in,
as Germans will say that this area was, at least by the reign of
the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, almost totally Germanified by the likes
of the Quadi and Marcomanni invasions, while others will say (probably)
that they Quadi and Marcomanni settled further afield, perhaps in
the Crimea where there were Gothic speakers as late as the 16th
century.

> Please note that some Ukrainian scientists, notably historians of the
> nationalist school, have the awful habit of politicizing their field by
> obstinately viewing Ukraine as if it were the centre of everything,
> especially the Slavic world, Christianity, Europe, Western civilization,
> or simply the whole world.
Oh, no doubt.  I will be the first to admit that in many countries
nationalism wins out over science.  As I said, however, he did not
actually make the claim.

> > > Diphthongs
> > > /ae/    [Aj]
> > > /oe/    [Oj], perhaps [jev]
> >
> > Any particular reason in having /e/ be the off-glide?
>
> To be honest, I don't know when (and where) the pronunciation of
> Latin /ae/  shifted from [aj] to [e].
Well, my question was more:  why do you claim that the underlying
representation is /ae/ (not the spelling <ae>), which is only
realized as [ai]?

> > > /p/     before short /e/ for /i/ > [p'] (= [p_j])
> >
> > I was a little confused about this for a moment, because [']
> > usually signifies glottalization on a preceding obstruent.
> > I suppose as one learns the shorthand, though, it's not a
> > bad thing.
>
> This is how I understood it from the X-SAMPA home page: that ' and _j are
> synonyms.
That's fine -- but I don't use X-SAMPA, and I find this particular
feature inadequate.

> Thank you for your feedback,
Any time. :)



 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier
Dept. of Linguistics  "Nihil magis praestandum est quam ne pecorum ritu
University of Chicago sequamur antecedentium gregem, pergentes non qua
1010 E. 59th Street   eundum est, sed qua itur." -- Seneca
Chicago, IL 60637

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