Talk:Balto-Slavic languages

message: Now, what did they say about Baltic and Slavic? Look up Andersen, H. Slavic and the Indo-European migrations. In “Language contacts in prehistory: studies in stratigraphy”, 2003, p.50 (via Google Books). I think you better get busy with your "Modern interpretation" section.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gotho-Baltic (talk • contribs) 23:15, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ivanov and Toporov, 1961 

message: Someone templated the section Proto-Balto-Slavic language to be splitoff from the article? The answer should be: of course, go ahead! The reasons are:
# an edit of the article says that it is 58 kilobytes long, a splitoff is very due,
# having separate articles for the language families and their hypothetical proto-language is the general pattern applied to f.ex. Proto-Indo-European language and Indo-European languages, why should Balto-Slavic be different?
... said: Rursus (mbork³) 16:39, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I've gone ahead and split off Proto-Balto-Slavic language. Both the new article and the now-empty section in this article will need some love to further spruce them up as separate entities. —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 09:17, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Splitoff?

message: I have split off the very lengthy discussion about the term "Serbo-Crotian" to a separate subpage so as to not clog this page with very large charts and tables. Please continue the discussion there. (This action should not be construed as my involvement in the actual discussion or as support for any given side of the argument.) —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 09:42, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Serbo-Croatian controversy

message: The text says, "...close...exclusive...most important...". I want all these isoglosses, not just the most important.
:Of the ten isoglosses said to be most important, six refer to grammar.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.27.15.185 (talk) 15:25, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Most important isoglosses 

message: It is said that "relative chronology" is "most important". It is not clear why this is so.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.157.131.67 (talk) 15:49, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It is most important because it helps to decide whether a change/feature is old enough to matter with regard to subgrouping. A change which happened in the Middle Ages would not matter even if it had happened in all the Baltic and Slavic languages, and it may well be possible to determine this lateness of the change through relative chronology. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:30, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relative chronology 

message: See Talk:Lithuanian language.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.193.97.141 (talk) 11:37, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  See 

message: Gentlemen!
Apparently the debate is highly emotional. As a non-linguist and interested layman not having a stake in either the Slavs' being grouped together with the Balts or in their not being so grouped, I should humbly like to ask what you think that the theoretical advantages of accepting the Balto-Slavic theory (or hypothesis, if you prefer) are. Is fighting over it really worth so much while? It is clear that the Baltic and the Slavic languages are appreciably close to each other, perhaps more so than either is to say Germanic or Iranian, and it is also clear that they are different: Polish and  Macedonian are, methinketh, considerably more like each other than either is like Lithuanian. Que diable, then? What would it change if the existence of a Proto-Balto-Slavic language is asserted or not (and common Indo-European dialects are assumed to have existed, instead)? Thank you in advance. 78.49.0.151 (talk) Wojciech Żełaniec  —Preceding undated comment added 09:39, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Politics certainly add to the controversy outside academics, but for linguists they do not matter (and personally, I do not see why the issue should matter in politics at all – no entitlements can be justified with historical linguistics, and what happened in pre-Christian Eastern Europe has little immediate relevance for now). They are just interested if the similarities between Baltic and Slavic are due to a distinctive Proto-Balto-Slavic language stage (distinctive from Proto-Indo-European, that is), or exclusively the result of later convergence. I would say that the ability to reconstruct a Proto-Balto-Slavic language would be very advantageous for the purposes of Indo-European linguistics, because it would greatly assist the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European and help understand the complicated developments to the individual modern Baltic and Slavic languages and dialects. A Proto-Balto-Slavic reconstruction would basically provide the equivalent of finding a new ancient Indo-European language perhaps about as archaic, and as old, as Ancient Greek or Sanskrit in many aspects, and simplify things (you don't always need to delve into the individual languages). In the many millennia between Proto-Indo-European and the modern Baltic and Slavic languages and dialects, there are so many changes to keep track of, including lots of accent laws which are confusing even to regular Indo-European linguists, and Balto-Slavic accentology has become a veritable subspecialisation, a subfield of a subfield (historical Balto-Slavic linguistics) of a subfield (historical Indo-European linguistics) of a subfield of linguistics. On that long road, Proto-Balto-Slavic, just like Proto-Slavic or Old East Slavic, provide important stops. What is also exciting is that any feature or word reconstructible to either Proto-Slavic or the earliest Baltic is now a candidate for Proto-Balto-Slavic, which would mean not only a rich nominal but also verbal morphology (with optative, future, aorist, imperative of the third person, and many verbal nouns and adjectives). Words and roots reconstructed for Proto-Balto-Slavic, even if attested in no other Indo-European language, and especially if they are attested in another Indo-European language, are also candidates for potentially being of Proto-Indo-European age. However, the existence of a Proto-Balto-Slavic stage also means that the mere fact of a word or root being found in both Baltic and Slavic (even if it is apparently old within both) definitely does not mean that it is highly likely to be very old, while a word or root that is found both in Germanic (or Celtic, or Italic) and Indo-Iranian is highly likely to be of Proto-Indo-European age. Moreover, as an added bonus, Proto-Balto-Slavic reconstructions, while quite archaic, as well, look more familiar than Proto-Indo-European reconstructions. Of course, that Proto-Balto-Slavic would be cool to have is on its own no reason to accept it, a compelling case has to be made, too; but I think this case can be made, and has already largely been made, accentology (and, I think, word-final developments even more) providing the best arguments or even decisive proof. At least Fortson's well-respected and popular handbook already accepts Balto-Slavic as fact, which is great for Wikipedia because handbooks are the best guide to what is state of the art in a field of enquiry. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:33, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  What the theoretical advantages are 

message: Someone need to add words - Ekran (screen) same in LT, LV, RUS and Зубы (Russian) the same as  PL-zęby, LV-zobi, CZ-zuby)
more:
ekran-экран
reklama-Реклама
akcia-акция  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.109.65.175 (talk) 16:09, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Those are recent loanwords, and are therefore not relevant to what is being discussed. What matters here is shared vocabulary that dates to the Balto-Slavic period. CodeCat (talk) 17:15, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Add more words to "Shared vocabulary" 

message: Note that Proto-Balto-Slavic_language#Developement_from_Proto-Indo-European_to_Proto-Baltic says correctly that only one sound law is held in common by Baltic and Slavonic.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.126.73.168 (talk) 12:52, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Only one sound law in common 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Kosovo should be gray in the map. Bunker92 (talk) 20:07, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kosovo 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: "Raising of stressed *o to *u in a final syllable". In the article, doubtful theory like a true thing is presented. There are lots of clear evidences, e. g. PIE. r, l, m, n,  > Proto-Baltic, Proto-Slavic *ir, *il, *im, *in (*ur, *ul,*un, *um). But stressed PIE. *o > Proto-Baltic > *u is highly weak conclusion and it isn't recognized as a true fact in the linguists' debates.     
#As Z. Zinkevičius writes, U-stem adjectives (bjaur-as > bjaur-us) became productive in the last times.
#There are no faithful arguments in proof of the reason. The most hopeful is o-stem adjectives shifted to u-stem to avoid coincidence of noun and adjective: Lith. noun  labas 'wealth' : adjective labas 'good'. P. Vanags claims the same, he recognize correlation of stressed  o > u and unstressed o > o being a weak and doubtful thing, u-stem adjectives vs. o-stem nouns seem to be a morphological differentiation of noun and adjective. Everyone can read it on  P. Vanags's article On the history of Baltic u-stem adjectives.--Ed1974LT (talk) 18:01, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Doubtful theory as a faithful fact on WP

message: I have been asked to provide a third opinion. I'm honored, but I'm not sure if I'm the right person, since I know  practically nothing about Baltic languages (except for a question about Lithuanian vocative, which may have earned me the request). I am certain that there are others more qualified than me on Wikipedia, but I'll try my best. 
I would boil down the main question this discussion revolves around as: Should the "Two laws of final syllables in the common prehistory of Baltic and Slavonic" be presented in the article as undisputed? 
To this, our policies have a clear answer: If there is no reliable source that says the Two Laws are disputed, they we can't claim that they are disputed, in other words, we must treat them as undisputed. 
That said, I want to take into account the intention of Ed1974LT, who disagrees with the Two Laws. One can boil down Ed's line of argument to a series of logical premises and conclusions. The policy WP:OR does not allow logical conclusions, but it does allow Routine calculations. Since I don't know why simple logic is not explicitly allowed, I will now consider a syllogism a form of a routine calculation. 
The parts of Ed's argument are:
# Premise: If a change has happened to Proto-Balto-Slavic, must be visible in Proto-Baltic.  (23:08, 7 August)
# Premise: The Two Laws state that -os > -us for Proto-Balto-Slavic 
# Therefore, the Two Laws claim that original -os > -us in Proto-Baltic. 
# Alternative wording of above conclusion: The Two Laws state that a change occured in Proto-Baltic (3000 y. ago) (22:39, 7 August)
# Premise: Lithuanian stačias, bjauras, stipras transformed to u-stem paradigm in last 2-3 hundreds years (22:39, 7 August)
# Premise: If a change occured in Proto-Baltic then the transformation could not have happened in Lithuanian (22:39, 7 August)
# Therefore, the Two Laws are in contradiction to what happened. 
To Ed, it seems that the above is simple logic. However, at least one step appears to be not as clear cut, as shown by CodeCat's assertion that "Hill and Zinkevičius can both be right". Obviously, judging this requires more knowledge in the area than I have, so I can neither confirm nor refute Ed's chain of argument. 
Instead, I have to fall back to the following consideration: This line of argument is at least easy enough to occur to scholars of the topic. The Two laws of final syllables in the common prehistory of Baltic and Slavonic were first presented in 2009 in what appears to be, judging by List of linguistics conferences#International, the international conference on historical linguistics. So they had enough visibility and scholars had enough time for any criticism to be published. Since that apparently hasn't happened, I conclude that the line of argument isn't as simple as Ed makes it out, and the Two Laws must remain as undisputed in this article. — Sebastian 21:19, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Third opinion 

message: We only get three words in the shared vocabulary.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.141.100.176 (talk) 11:47, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shared vocabulary 

message: The number of phonetic features is variously said to be 9, 10 and 12.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.141.100.176 (talk) 11:51, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sounds 

message: The file in question is claimed to be a derivative of the file "IndoEuropeanTree.svg", however, that file clearly shows that Ukrainian, Rusyn and Belarusian are descended from the dead Ruthenian language, which is in turn descended from Old East Slavic. The "Slavic_languages_tree.svg" file shows that Russian, Ukrainian, Rusyn and Belarusian are descended directly from Old East Slavic, parallel to the "Old Ruthenian Language", which is shown as dead and without no descendants - this goes against both the original file of which it is derivative of, and it also goes against the contemprorary understanding of the classification Slavic languages.
I suggest a new file be made to match the "IndoEuropeanTree.svg" file closely. Mnohohrishnyi (talk) 09:18, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, someone modified the file to change this. If you check the file history. The first version was correct. Mellk (talk) 09:58, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  The file "Slavic_languages_tree.svg" used in the article is inaccurate