ABSTRACT
The first to offer a principled challenge to the neogrammarian tenet of a post-IndoEuropean period of Balto-Slavic common development was Antoine Meillet in 1908 (cf. 1967: 59-67).1 In Meillet’s view, the various agreements between the two language families reflect either inherited Indo-European archaisms (with both Baltic and Slavic developing from nearly identical Indo-European dialects) or later parallel developments in each of the branches, rather than shared innovations that would demonstrate a stage of linguistic unity.
