A history of East Baltic through language contact

[merimaa]

Jacob, Anthony. (2023).
A history of East Baltic through language contact.
https://scholarlypublications.universit ... 87/3630131

"In this dissertation, I take a deep dive into the East Baltic lexicon, peeling away the layers of prehistoric borrowings in the process. As well as significant contact events with known languages, like the Russian dialect of Novgorod-Pskov, Gothic and the ancestors of modern Finnish, Sámi and Mordvin, the lexicon also reveals evidence of contact with unattested languages from which earlier populations must have shifted upon the arrival of the Balts in the Baltic region. The fragments obtained not only shed light on the linguistic features of these lost languages, but also provide a new perspective on the sociolinguistic scenario which led the earlier populations of the region to undergo language shift."

"No Indo-­European loanword layers can be identified with certainty in Baltic prior to those with Gothic at the start of the Common Era. Contacts with Slavic, as far as we can make out, only started after the northern migration of (pre­-)North Russian speakers. In addition, a notable layer of Baltic loanwords can be identified in Finnic, suggesting a significant contact event."
[...]
"There does not appear to be any old Finnic contribution to the Baltic lexicon, and the evidence seems to support the notion of an East Baltic substrate, most probably spoken to the east of the current Baltic territories, which was absorbed by Finnic sometime before the Common Era. In addition, we see small layers of loanwords in both Sámi and Mordvin, suggesting some peripheral contact with this or a closely related Baltic language."
[...]
"We have approached the question of non­-Indo-­European components in the Baltic lexicon from multiple angles. [...] there are a number of convincing examples which allow for a hypothesis that Baltic and Finnic were independently in contact with similar, and probably also distinct, ‘autochthonous’ populations upon their arrival in the Baltic Sea region."