The East Baltic languages are well known for their conservative phonology as compared to other Indo-European languages, which has led to a stereotype that the Balts developed in isolation without much contact with other speech communities. This book challenges that view, taking a deep dive into the East Baltic lexicon and peeling away the layers of prehistoric borrowings in the process. As well as significant contact events with known languages, the lexicon also reveals evidence of contact with unattested languages from which previous populations must have shifted.
Acknowledgements
List of Tables
Symbols and Abbreviations
Data Sources and Conventions
Introduction
Part 1 Contacts with Known Languages
1 Baltic–Slavic Contacts
1.1 Early Slavic → Baltic Loans
1.2 Early Baltic → Slavic Loans?
2 Early Germanic → Baltic Loans
3 Baltic → Finnic Borrowings
3.1 Preliminaries
3.2 Baltic Loanwords with an IE Etymology
3.3 Analysis of Sound Substitutions
3.4 Loans from Proto-Finnic to Proto-Baltic?
3.5 Common Loans from Unknown Sources?
3.6 Analysis of Contact Relationship
4 Loanwords into Other Uralic Languages
4.1 Sámi
4.2 Mordvin
4.3 Mari
4.4 Permic
4.5 Conclusion
Part 2 Contacts with Unknown Languages
5 Introduction
5.1 Research History
5.2 Methodological Considerations
5.3 Excursus: Illegal Root Structures
5.4 Preliminaries
6 Consonantism
6.1 ‘Nasalization’, * ∞ *
6.2 Voicing Alternations
6.3 Sibilant Clusters
6.4 Other Irregularities
7 Vocalism
7.1 Initial Vowels
7.2 Alternations between Front and Back Vowels
7.3 Alternations between Low and High Vowels
7.4 Alternations between Monophthongs and Diphthongs
7.5 Length Alternations
7.6 IE *a
8 Analysis
8.1 Semantics
8.2 Stratification
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index of Languages
Anthony Jakob, Ph.D. (2023), Leiden University, is a comparative linguist who specializes in palaeolinguistics and etymology with particular reference to the Baltic languages. He is also an emerging scholar in the field of Uralic linguistics and has presented on topics in this field at international fora.
