Baltic languages: a short question.

[anglesqueville]

I just read this on a blog, which nearly made me fall off my chair: "The Baltic languages ​​are not ancient, they arose no sooner than they separated from the Balto-Slavic continuum. There is nothing particularly ancient in it, the verb system is so simply completely innovative, essentially Finno-Ugric, in contrast to the completely archaic Indo-European Slavic". I always believed that the Baltic conjugation (without speaking of the nominal morphology and the phonology, which are imo completely explainable on an IE ground) is precisely very archaic, and furthermore that they share some of their innovations with other IE groups (like the -s- future, with Greek and Sanskrit). I'm absolutely unable to find the least feature in Baltic conjugation that could be due to a Uralic influence. I'm really perplexed, as I cannot imagine how anyone could write something so affirmative without at least some strong argument. What do I miss, where is the flaw in my knowledge?

[George]

Sounds like khutspah-talk to me as stated (:=)) I always thought Slavic was a late offshoot from Balto-Slavic.

[anglesqueville]

Sounds like khutspah-talk to me as stated (:=)) I always thought Slavic was a late offshoot from Balto-Slavic.

"Late", I'm not sure. You know that the relationship between Slavic, East-Baltic and West-Baltic is a difficult question, in fact much too difficult for me. But, yes, the more I think about it, the more the affirmation of this guy seems ... khutspah, as you said.

[JoeyP37]

That sounds like Carlos' crazy talk! I always thought Proto-Slavic was a South Baltic dialect, spoken by a people in close contact with Scythian tribes and also with contacts with Germanic groups. Probably in northwestern Ukraine, southwest Belarus, southeast Poland.

[anglesqueville]

That sounds like Carlos' crazy talk! I always thought Proto-Slavic was a South Baltic dialect, spoken by a people in close contact with Scythian tribes and also with contacts with Germanic groups. Probably in northwestern Ukraine, southwest Belarus, southeast Poland.

That is exactly Kortlandt's thesis, in a recent study (2018 if I remember correctly). I don't feel authorized to have an opinion about the chronology of the split (my level is elementary in Russian, less than elementary in Lithuanian, and btw hardly better in Finnish), it's the reason why I'm never confident in what I know (or believe I know). I suspect some old theories in the claim of the blogger I quoted. For example, some linguists of the past century (I can't remember their names) attributed to Balto-Finnic the lack of distinction of singular vs plural in the 3d person in Lithuanian and Latvian, but I'm pretty sure that this attribution is now dismissed, and anyway, this would be far from being enough for qualifying Baltic conjugation of "Finno-Ugric". Furthermore, Matasovic has completely destroyed the fable of a Uralic lexical substrate in proto-Balto-Slavic.
I don't read Quiles anymore, it was a useless expenditure of time. I believe I'm going to do the same for the comments on the blog where the quotation comes from. There are definitely too many clowns expressing there their fantasms.

[teftelis]

That is exactly Kortlandt's thesis, in a recent study (2018 if I remember correctly). I don't feel authorized to have an opinion about the chronology of the split (my level is elementary in Russian, less than elementary in Lithuanian, and btw hardly better in Finnish), it's the reason why I'm never confident in what I know (or believe I know). I suspect some old theories in the claim of the blogger I quoted. For example, some linguists of the past century (I can't remember their names) attributed to Balto-Finnic the lack of distinction of singular vs plural in the 3d person in Lithuanian and Latvian, but I'm pretty sure that this attribution is now dismissed, and anyway, this would be far from being enough for qualifying Baltic conjugation of "Finno-Ugric". Furthermore, Matasovic has completely destroyed the fable of a Uralic lexical substrate in proto-Balto-Slavic.
I don't read Quiles anymore, it was a useless expenditure of time. I believe I'm going to do the same for the comments on the blog where the quotation comes from. There are definitely too many clowns expressing there their fantasms.

That poster who made that quote is not reasonable and it's no use to try to debate him or try to talk any sense in to him, since he has strong opinion on all topics and if your opinion differs in the slightest he'll call you stupid, I don't understand why he's tolerated in there, but anyway getting a bit off topic here.

[anglesqueville]

^ My goal in this thread was basically to check the reliability of my own beliefs on this topic. Of course, I don't want to debate. The guy believes what he believes, I don't care. Unless something unexpected comes up, my topic is closed.

[DgidguBidgu]

^ My goal in this thread was basically to check the reliability of my own beliefs on this topic. Of course, I don't want to debate. The guy believes what he believes, I don't care. Unless something unexpected comes up, my topic is closed.

Beliefs have nothing to do with realities and facts.
The Balts are Slavicized by the southern Slavs.
The structure of the language alone is sufficient to determine which is more ancient. Well, it can't be the Baltic.
From the Slavic languages,
only one has been characterized by analyticism since the 13th century according to studied inscriptions from the epoch of course.
We are talking about a much older language related to even older IE languages ​​from the Balkans.
It is very clear that the Old Slavonic books and the alphabet come again from the southern Slavs. There is no historical contradiction here to argue and look for some new and convenient for someone specific truth.
I think DNA is a sufficient category in itself to also illustrate the above, already proven by linguistics.

[Kanenas]

That statement does not make sense to me.

My personal view is the Uralic verb system has Indo-European origin or Uralic is a branch of 'Indo-Hittite', maybe as old as 'Late PIE', transformed under influence of an adstrate (for example the 'negative verb' which exists for example in Korean too should be the result of a non-IE influence).

Slavic languages are archaic in many ways (concerning nouns for example there are some languages/ dialects like Sorbian and some Slovene and Croatian dialects retaining the dual), but like in all languages there are innovations. Concerning the verb, for example, they form the future periphrastically. That is an innovation, very widespread in Europe though since late antiquity at least.

Baltic forms the perfect periphrastically, that is also a very common innovation, but not Uralic in origin but 'Standard Average European' most likely.

By the way, concerning lack of distinction of singular vs plural in the 3d person, maybe not related but in Attic Greek (but not modern Greek) it was common to use the 3rd person singular endings for the plural, e.g ta paidia (n. pl.) paizei (v. sg.) instead of ta paidia (n. pl.) paizousi (v. pl.) ( < paizonti), like saying ~ the children is playing. In Greek that is the case, I think because some plurals were originally collective nouns ending in proto-Greek in -a, which were or were perceived as grammatically singular (?).

[Onur Dincer]

Beliefs have nothing to do with realities and facts.
The Balts are Slavicized by the southern Slavs.
The structure of the language alone is sufficient to determine which is more ancient. Well, it can't be the Baltic.
From the Slavic languages,
only one has been characterized by analyticism since the 13th century according to studied inscriptions from the epoch of course.
We are talking about a much older language related to even older IE languages ​​from the Balkans.
It is very clear that the Old Slavonic books and the alphabet come again from the southern Slavs. There is no historical contradiction here to argue and look for some new and convenient for someone specific truth.
I think DNA is a sufficient category in itself to also illustrate the above, already proven by linguistics.

What does alphabet have to do with this discussion? The oldest written IE language is Hittite, should we assume based on this that IE originated and spread from Anatolia? Also, what migration wave of Southern Slavs to the Baltics are you talking about? What is the archaeological and genetic evidence for that migration? If you mean the Slavic ancestors of Southern Slavs before their invasion of the Balkans, then it is more appropriate to talk about Proto-Slavs or early Slavs.