Proto-Balto-Slavic language


Proto-Balto-Slavic is a reconstructed proto-language descending from Proto-Indo-European. From Proto-Balto-Slavic, the later Balto-Slavic languages are thought to have developed, composed of the Baltic and Slavic sub-branches, and including modern Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian and Serbo-Croatian, among others.
Like most other proto-languages, it is not attested by any surviving texts but has been reconstructed using the comparative method. There are several isoglosses that Baltic and Slavic languages share in phonology, morphology and accentology, which represent common innovations from Proto-Indo-European times and can be chronologically arranged.

Dating

According to linguist Tijmen Pronk, the period of Balto-Slavic linguistic unity may have extended for as long as 1,500 years, from the earliest post-Proto-Indo-European stages to the early 2nd millennium BC, after which the Baltic and Slavic branches developed independently. He considers it plausible to associate Proto-Balto-Slavic with the early phases of the Middle Dnieper culture.
Pronk further observes that, during the Proto-Balto-Slavic period, no substantial period of shared innovations with either Germanic or Indo-Iranian can be established, suggesting that Proto-Balto-Slavic speakers had already become geographically separated from the ancestors of those groups following the breakup of Proto-Indo-European. Linguist Frederik Kortlandt also argues that the substantial body of shared vocabulary between Germanic and Balto-Slavic languages consists largely of borrowings that postdate the Baltic–Slavic split and appear to date to the early Middle Ages. On this basis, he maintains that Germanic and Proto-Balto-Slavic cannot have formed contiguous Indo-European dialects.

Phonology

Consonants

Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirated stops lost their aspiration in Proto-Balto-Slavic. Stops were no longer distinguished between fortis and aspirated but were voiceless and voiced. However, several new palatal consonants had developed: *ś and *ź from earlier palatovelar plosives and *š from *s as a result of the Ruki sound law.
  • surfaced as an allophone of before a voiced consonant in Proto-Balto-Slavic.

    Vowels

Proto-Balto-Slavic preserved much of the late Proto-Indo-European vowel system. Short *o was merged into *a, and former *eu had become *jau.
Proto-Balto-Slavic also possessed "sonorant diphthongs", consisting of a short vowel followed by *l, *m, *n or *r. These were inherited from Proto-Indo-European, and formed anew from PIE syllabic sonorants. Although not diphthongs in the traditional sense, they behaved as a single syllable nucleus in Proto-Balto-Slavic, and could bear the acute like long vowels and regular diphthongs.
-l-m-n-r
a-alamanar
e-elemener
i-iliminir
u-ulumunur

Accent

Most Proto-Balto-Slavic words could be accented on any syllable, as in Proto-Indo-European. The placement of the accent was changed significantly relative to PIE, with much paradigmatic leveling of the mobile PIE accent, along with leftward and rightward shifts conditioned by the surrounding phonemes. There is still some disagreement among linguists on the exact position of the accent in each Proto-Balto-Slavic form, and the rules governing these changes.

Acute

Some syllables in Proto-Balto-Slavic had an additional distinguishing feature, known as acuteness. It is primarily a reflex of the Proto-Indo-European laryngeals, as well as a result of Winter's law. The exact nature of the acute is not clear, and different linguists have different interpretations of it.
The modern interpretation, favoured by an increasing number of linguists, is that the acute was realised as glottalisation, an interruption of voicing similar to the stød found in Danish. This glottalisation is still found in modern Samogitian and Latvian, under the term "broken tone". Olander indicates it with a superscript glottalisation symbol ˀ after the nucleus of the syllable, while Jasanoff is more noncommittal and uses underlining. Some linguists go further, and interpret the acute as an actual consonantal segment, which Derksen indicates as a glottal stop ʔ and Kortlandt as a laryngeal consonant H. They reconstruct this consonantal segment not just after vowels, but also before them, as direct reflexes of PIE laryngeals. Such consonantal reflexes of laryngeals are not widely accepted, however. For consistency, Olander's glottalisation symbol ˀ will be used in this article.
In Proto-Balto-Slavic, the acute was independent of accent position, and could appear on any "long" syllable, which included:
  • Syllables with long vowels. They could be original PIE long vowels or vowels that were lengthened by a following laryngeal.
  • Syllables with vocalic diphthongs.
  • Syllables with sonorant diphthongs, which consisted of short vowel followed by *l, *m, *n or *r.
Thus, any syllable was either long with acute, long without acute or short. Syllables without acute are sometimes collectively termed "circumflex", although this term is also used specifically for long syllables lacking the acute. Within an inflectional paradigm, a long syllable could become short if the nucleus was immediately followed by an inflectional ending beginning with a vowel. This, in turn, resulted in the loss of the acute, as the acute was not permitted on short syllables. Such alternations were found in consonant stem nouns and in primary verbs.
No modern language retains the original Balto-Slavic distribution of the acute. In Lithuanian and Slavic, the acute distinction was lost on unaccented syllables and converted to an intonation distinction. This happened relatively late and not before some important accentual changes occurred, such as Fortunatov–de Saussure's law and Dybo's law. In Latvian, the acute is reflected as the glottalised "broken tone" in words that originally had mobile accentuation.

Alternations

Proto-Balto-Slavic retained the system of ablaut from its parent language, but it was far less productive and had been significantly reworked. Vowel alternations were often leveled, but it is not always easy to determine how far this leveling had progressed by the time the Balto-Slavic dialects began to diverge, as the leveling progressed along the same lines in all of them to some degree.
The lengthened grade remained productive in word derivation and was used in many innovative formations that were not present in Proto-Indo-European. After the merger of *o and *a, the resulting phoneme *a could lengthen to both *ā and *ō.
Pre-Proto-Slavic retained many such uses of lengthened grades in morphology. The length distinctions are reflected as vowel quality distinctions in Late Common Slavic and the later Slavic languages:
  • Proto-Balto-Slavic *ślṓˀwāˀ > Early Proto-Slavic *slāwā "fame, glory" > Late Proto-Slavic vs. Proto-Balto-Slavic *ślawas > Early Proto-Slavic *slawa "word" > Late Proto-Slavic
  • Proto-Balto-Slavic *twāris > Early Proto-Slavic *twāri "substance" > Late Proto-Slavic vs. Proto-Balto-Slavic *twárīˀtei > Early Proto-Slavic *twarītei "to form, create" > Late Proto-Slavic )
These are similar examples in Lithuanian:
  • Lithuanian prõtas "intellect, mind" vs. pràsti "to understand"
  • Lithuanian gė̃ris "goodness" vs. gẽras "good"
On the basis of the existing length alternations inherited from Proto-Indo-European, new alternations arose between the long *ī, *ū and the short *i, *u. This latter type of apophony was not productive in PIE. Compare:
  • Lithuanian mū̃šis "battle" versus mùšti "to kill, hit"
  • Lithuanian lỹkis "remainder" versus lìkti "to stay, keep"
The new type of apophonic length was especially used in Pre-Proto-Slavic in the formation of durative, iterative and imperfective verbs. Compare:
  • Proto-Balto-Slavic *dírāˀtei > Early Proto-Slavic *dirātei "to tear vs. Early Proto-Slavic *arz-dīrātei > Late Proto-Slavic *orzdirati > OCS razdirati
  • Proto-Balto-Slavic *bírāˀtei > Early Proto-Slavic *birātei "to pick" > Late Proto-Slavic ) vs. Early Proto-Slavic *bīrātei "to choose" > Late Proto-Slavic *birati
Certain pairs of words show a change of older initial *a- a-, * to *e-, which is sometimes called "Rozwadowski's rule". The exact conditioning of this change is currently not well understood, but led to alternations between *e- and *a- in related words or even as alternative forms of the same word. The alternations often gave rise to different initial vowels in different languages. Several words retained the alternation into Proto-Slavic times as well, which became an alternation between *e- and *o-:
  • Proto-Balto-Slavic *elawa/''*alawa "lead" > Bulgarian élavo, Polish ołów, Russian ólovo "tin", Old Prussian elwas ~ alwis.
  • Proto-Balto-Slavic *éźera/*áźera "lake" > Bulgarian ézero, ézer, Polish jezioro, Latvian ezers, Lithuanian ẽžeras; Russian ózero, Old Prussian assaran, Latgalian azars''.

    Development from Proto-Indo-European

Austrian Balto-Slavist Georg Holzer has reconstructed a relative chronology of 50 Balto-Slavic sound changes, referring only to phonology, not to accentuation, from Proto-Balto-Slavic down to the modern daughter languages. However, only the first 12 are Common Balto-Slavic and so relevant for this article :
  1. Ruki law: *s > *š after *r, *u, *k or *i.
  2. Laryngeals are lost between consonants in non-initial syllables.
  3. Winter's law: short vowels are lengthened when followed by a nonaspirated voiced stop.
  4. *o > *a.
  5. Aspirated voiced stops lose their aspiration and merge with the plain voiced stops.
  6. Labiovelar stops lose their labialization and merge with the plain velars.
  7. Satemization: *ḱ, *ǵ > *ś, *ź.
  8. *ewV > *awV.
  9. *i is inserted before syllabic sonorants, creating new liquid diphthongs.
  10. *wl, *wr > *l, *r word-initially.
Pre-Indo-European substrate is likely absent from Proto-Balto-Slavic.