Review Article: On the Ethnogenesis and Protohome of the Slavs: The Linguistic Evidence

A review of four works on the origin of the Slavs as a separate ethnolinguistic entity. Oleg Nikolaevic Trubacev's Etnogenez i kul'tura drevnejsix slavjan. Lingvisticeskie issledovanija ([Ethnogenesis and Culture of the Ancient Slavs. Linguistic Studies], Moscow: Nauka, 1991) is assessed, indicating that although the onomastic/etymological arguments are sound, they are not convincing in the conclusion that the Slavs originate in the mid-Danubian basin as speakers of a dialect of Indo-European separate from, & equally as archaic as, the Baltic branch. The work of Hanna-Popowska-Taborska (Wczesne dzieje Slowian w swietle ichjezyka [Early History of the Slavs in Light of Their Languages], Wroclaw: Ossolineum, 1991) is evaluated as disappointing, in that persuasive arguments are presented against current theories on the origin of the Slavs but no positive alternative hypothesis is proposed. The conclusions of Zbigniew Golab (The Origins of the Slavs: A Linguists View, Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1992), that the Slavs originate in a Balto-Slavic ethnolinguistic unity in the Upper Don region, from which they migrated to the mid-Dneiper area & diverged from the Balts due to independent sociolinguistic influences, are judged to be convincing, though some of the supporting arguments are found to be flawed. The lexicostatistical methodology of Witold Manczak (De la prehistoire des peuples indo-europeens [On the Proto-History of the Indo-Europeans], Cracow: U Jagiellonski, 1992 [see listings in IRPL, this issue]) is heavily criticized, & the proposal of an origin for the Slavs in the Oder-Vistula basin independent of the Balts is therefore taken to be essentially unsupported by the onomastic/etymological arguments. 43 References. S. Novak