SLAVIC A BALTICIZED ALBANIAN?

Harvey E. Mayer
Hamp (1984) in his criticism of my article (Mayer 1981), after his inaccurate comment that Iranian,
because of its vowel system, 'can surely be classified only with Indic',1 makes statements about
Albanian which stimulate major investigation.
He says: 'It can be said to be related more closely to Baltic and Slavic than to anything else, and
certainly not to be close to Thracian.'2
I ask: If so, is Albanian more closely related to Slavic than to Baltic? And if it is, was Pre-Slavic
originally so closely tied with Pre-Albanian in Late Dialectal Indo-European times that both
represented very minor variations of the same dialect as opposed to other dialects like Pre-Baltic, PreIranian, Pre-Germanic, etc.?
Martynov (1981) says that Proto-Slavic is Italicized Proto-Baltic while Common Slavic is Iranicized
Proto-Slavic. This is all based on lexicon. My suggestion that Slavic mainly reflects in its essence an
original Pre-Albanian variant both phonologically and lexically with a huge superimposed Baltic lexical
influence now extending into morphology rests on a broader and deeper linguistic base. With this, it
offers some answers to some vexing questions.
Phonologically, Slavic and Albanian have the following notable ancient ties: 1. Th, TH to T, 2. Dh,
DH to D (T = voiceless stop, D = voiceless stop, h = aspiration, H = laryn-geal), 3. s alternating
with h (not true of Baltic), 4. reflexes of k' (g'(h) kept separate from those of the ruki law (not true of
Baltic), 5. ks- to h- (not true of Baltic), a special, exclusive Albanian-Slavic reflex, 6. more cases of k',
g'(h) to k, g than other satem languages including Baltic which shows sibilants instead (Shevelov
1965 for the Slavic).
Lexically, Slavic and Albanian correspondences minus Baltic ones outnumber Baltic and Albanian
correspondences minus Slavic ones.3 This is striking when we consider that the opposite is true for
Hittite and Tokharian.
Viewing (Pre-)Slavic as a variant of (Pre-)Albanian, considering their relative geographic positions as
a constant, makes it easy for us to see just how Martynov's comments about Italic and Iranian
influences can apply not only for Slavic, but for Albanian as well. Note that North Iranian contacts
apparently influenced Slavic while South Iranian contacts apparently influenced Albanian.4
This (Pre)-Slavic-(Pre) Albanian view allows us also to suggest an answer to the question mentioned
by Trubaev (1981) of Common Slavic's absence from the region of Old European hydronomy in
which Baltic plays an important role, possibly even that of the center of its radiation. He says, "... and
this is very odd because it contradicts the supra-language and supra-dialect character of the named
hydronymic region and also contradicts all the old ties of Common Slavic with other Indo-European
languages of Europe, and finally contradicts the theory of departure of Common Slavic from the heart
of Common Baltic or its western branch.' This (Pre-)Slavic (Pre-)Albanian view might also allow us to
state with considerable assurance our answer to the question of the origins of Albanian, especially
since a similar problem with ancient Albanian place names in Albania occurs. The answer to both
questions is probably that the (Pre-)Slavs and (PreThe possibility of special, close aboriginal (Pre-)Slavic-(Pre)Albanian dialectal ties indicates the
Carpathians as a common ancestral home for (Pre-)Slavs and (Pre-)Albanians where they led a
pastoral, migratory existence. This location surely originally put them out of reach of contact with PreBaltic.

This is evidenced by two ancient phonological differences: 1. Slavic's and Albanian's reflexes of
k', g'(h) separate from those of the ruki law versus Baltic's early immediate merger of them into /s,
/z, 2. The special Slavo-Albanian reflex of ks-to h-: Russian dialectxinit' 'to condemn', Russian xilyj,
xiloj 'sickly'; Albanian (h)unj, Shkoder ulj, ulem 1 belittle' where h-is from ks- if not kh- (Fasmer 1973;
236-8)5 versus Baltic's metathesis of original ks- to sk-t an ancient change predating the ruki law:
Lithuanian skaudus 'painful' versus Slavic xudu 'bad' (Stang 1965:95).
It is significant that wherever original sk-/ks- occurs, Baltic has sk-, Slavic has reflexes of either, while
Albanian, where anti-Baltic drift is the strongest, has h- from an original ks- or, I believe, from a ks- via
metathesis from an original sk- before a back vowel as in hefrom skoia 'shadow' (Fasmer 1973:602).
My present view of Slavic as a heavily Balticized Albanian, I believe, helps make my answers to all of
Hamp's objections to my previous article's position against a Balto-Slavic protolanguage cogent
despite the 'evidence' he cites for it including 'syllabic contrast between long and short or acuted and
circumflex',6 'the remarkable agreement of Baltic and Slavic in the incidence of a double reflex of the
Indo-European syllabic sonants,7 and in the lengthening of syllables before Indo-European
mediae,8 and in the derivational vrddhi affecting i's and u's developed in Baltic and Slavic analyzed so
fully by Leskien, and in several basic formational features of the verbal system.' In the end all of this
involves borrowing, calking, and otherwise favoring of morphemes, even those occurring as doublets,
of one sort (words) or another (affixes) over others via dialect or language clustering contact.
With Pre-Slavs seen as originally basically nomadic northern Pre-Albanian descending northward
from the Carpathians into regions with sedentary, most likely, technically superior Baits, we can
expect their dialect to have been strongly influenced by Baltic. A further sign of this ancient situation is
the much greater degree of homogeneity of Slavic than of Baltic where more anciently sedentary
dialects tend to show far less homogeneity than migratory ones. Albanian, with more homogeneity
than Slavic, shows an even later onset of sedentary habits of its speakers who, having moved south,
characteristically, seem to have replaced one mountainous region (the Carpathians) with another (the
Balkans) to continue an earlier, somewhat migratory, nomadic type of living before finally becoming
sedentary.
I am grateful to Hamp for his remarks about Albanian. They helped me identify Pre-Slavic as a variant
of Pre-Albanian and support the notion that it was originally significantly different from Pre-Baltic
under whose influence it later fell. In a way, Slavic resembles English, a powerfully Romanized
Germanic language. But where the situation with English has been relatively easily identifiable, the
analogous situation with Slavic has been very elusive. This is not surprising. The influence of
conservative Baltic gave Slavic a conservative appearance. The influence of innovative neighboring
dialects and languages (Celtic, for example) on Albanian gave it a much changed appearance. The
immediate reaction has been: Albanian and Slavic look so different while Baltic and Slavic seem so
much alike.
To counter this, I provide the reminder that the proposed Slavic-Albanian linguistic unity ended a long
time ago, when Indo-European syllabic nasals n, m, n, m became vowels plus nasals. Before this,
Pre-Slavic and Pre-Albanian had had different new neighbors. For, perhaps, centuries before this PreSlavic, and not Pre-Albanian, had had Pre-Baltic and Pre-Germanic, and for, perhaps, millennia after
this Slavic, and not Albanian, had Baltic and Germanic as neighbors.
References
Fasmer, Maks. 1964-1973. Etimologieskij slovar' russkogo jazyka, tr. by O. N. Trubaev. Vote. 1-4. Moskva: Izdatelstvo
'Progress'.
_. 1973. (Volume 4 of the above) 236-8, 253, 602.
Fraenkel, Ernst. 1962-1965. Litauisches etymologisches Worterbuch, Vote. 1,2. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitatsverlag.
Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Hamp, Eric P. 1980. Thracian, Dacian and Albanian-Romanian Correspondences. Actes du IIe Congres international de
thracologie. Vol. 3, 57-60. Bucuresti.
_. 1984. On Myths and Accuracy. General Linguistics. 24.4.238-9.

Martynov, V.V. Balto-slavjano-iranskie jazykovye otnoenija. Balto-slavjanskie issledovanija 1980, 16-26. Moskva: Izdatel'stvo
"Nauka'.
Mayer, Harvey E. 1981. Two Linguistic Myths: Balto-Slavic and Common Baltic. Lituanus. 27.1.63-8.
_. 1983. Zum Lexikon und der balto-slavischen Frage. San Antonio: Defense Language Institute. /To appear in Zeitschrift fur
slavische Philologie./
_. 1987. Prussian, an Aboriginal a-Language? Lituanus. 35. 5. 66.
Shevelov, George Y. 1965. A Prehistory of Slavic: The Phonology of Common Slavic, 139-49. New York-Morningside Heights:
Columbia University Press.
Stang, Chr. S. 1966. Vergleichende Grammatik der baltischen Sprachen, 95. Oslo-Bergen-Tromso: Universitetsforlaget.
Trubaev, O.N. 1981. Replika po balto-slavjanskomu voprosu. Balto-slavjanskie issledovanija 1980, 4. Moskva: Izdatel'stvo
'Nauka'.
Winter, Werner. 1978. The distribution of short and long vowels in stems of the type Lith. esti: vesti: mesti and OCS jasti: vesti:
mesti in Baltic and Slavic Languages. Trends in Linguistics 4. Recent Developments in Historical Phonology, ed. by J. Fisiak,
431-46. The Hague-Paris-New York: Mouton.

Notes
1 Indie and Iranian once had five vowel systems of a, e, i, o, u, with e reconstructible from a in ca, ja from ke,
ge, short o restorable by Brugmann's law of oR + vowel to aR + vowel, and long o retraceable from long a in formations
alternating with those with a demonstrable erstwhile short o. With short o merging with short a before the merger of their long
counterparts in Iranian, we arrive at the vowel system of a, e, i, o, u which I proposed for a conceivable Late Central IndoEuropean dialect including Iranian.
2 Hamp (1980) says that in Pre-Roman times palatalization of Indo-European labio-velars before front vowels occurred in
Albanian but not in Thracian which proves Albanian could not have been Thracian. But can we be sure that the Latin and Greek
symbols used circa Roman times represented unpalatalized velars? Note also that Hamp surely classifies
Lithuanian as dose to Latvian despite Lithuanian's kelti, kilti, gyvas, geltonas, etc. without the palatalizations Latvian shows
in celt, cilt, dzivs, dzeltans ('raise, rise, alive, yellow'), etc.
3 In an article (Mayer 1987) I mention that examination of Fasmer 1964-1973 and Fraenkel 1962-1965 indicates that SlavicAlbanian-minus-Baltic native cognate roots outnumber Baltic-Albanian-minus-Slavic ones by approximately 1/3. Since we
expect languages of long separation to match better in original lexicon with more conservative Baltic, this opposite situation
with Albanian indicates special ties with Slavic as a unit separate from Baltic.
4 For Indo-European k', g'(h) North Iranian and Slavic coincide with s, z while South Iranian and Albanian coincide with th, dh.
5 This is less likely from kh. Note k, not h, in theke 'tip' from a possible kh.
6 In an article (Mayer 1983) and again in another (Mayer 1987) I explain the opposition in Baltic and Slavic of circumflex versus
acute which replaced that of short versus long in tautosyllables as having arisen from a process of affixation initiated in one
dialect or language and later spread to the others via calking. In these positions I saw long syllables arising from infixed vowel
morphemes homophonous with already present root vowels, e.g., *varn- 'raven': *va-a-rn- 'crow'. Here, by analogy with long
root vowels inherited from Indo-European as the long o in *do- 'give' the new long vowels arising through contraction were
acute. The same sort of new long vowels in affixes were circumflex as the e, (e/) in Old Church
Slavonic neseaste: Lithuanian nete 'you carried'. This new long-vowel-creating process involving positioning of morphological
elements was syntactic and, therefore, as easily calked as lexicon. In origin it was not at all phonetic.
7 Evidence from Indie (r, ur, ir) indicates three possible reflexes of an Indo-European syllabic resonant (R):1. neutral R which
later became aR in many dialects and daughter-languages, 2, labialized uR, and 3. palatalized iR. Where o tended to
become a, labialized uR and/or palatalized iR tended to be generalized for morphological purposes to avoid confusion
of TR(T) and ToR(T) reflexes, now both TaR(T). Through dialect and language clustering influences (calking, etc.), uR was
stabilized as the reflex of R was stabilized as an alternate reflex of R in satem palatalizing Baltic and Slavic.
8 This lengthening of syllables before Indo-European mediae mentioned by Winter (1978) was not phonetic, but morphological
in origin. Thus we find long e in Baltic and Slavic sed- 'sit down' matched by the same in Gothic setun 'they sat'. Short vowels
occur in the same morpheme with shifts in meaning in Gothic sitan 'to sit' and Slavic id- 'having gone', xod- 'going'. (Fasmer
1973:253 for the etymological connection.) Also, note the additional exceptions with (originally) short vowels:
Slavic voda 'water', koza 'goaf, ogni 'fire', eznoti 'to disappear', kogutu 'claw', stogu 'stack', stireni 'pivot'; Old
Russian: mulzu 'I churn butter'; Russian lizat' 'to lick'; Lithuanian:laigonas 'brother-in-law', luba 'ceiling board'.