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Thehistory of the Slavic languages stretches over 3000 years, from the point at which the ancestralProto-Balto-Slavic language broke up (c. 1500 BC) into the modern-daySlavic languages which are today natively spoken inEastern,Central andSoutheastern Europe as well as parts ofNorth Asia andCentral Asia.
The first 2000 years or so consist of the pre-Slavic era: a long, stable period of gradual development during which the language remained unified, with no discernible dialectal differences.
The last stage in which the language remained without internal differences can be dated to around 500 AD and is sometimes termedProto-Slavic proper orEarly Proto-Slavic. Following this is the Common Slavic period (c. 500–1000 AD), during which the first dialectal differences appeared but the entire Slavic-speaking area continued to function as a single language, withsound changes tending to spread throughout the entire area.
By around 1000 AD, the area had broken up into separateEast Slavic,West Slavic andSouth Slavic languages, and in the following centuries, i.e. 11–14th century, it broke up further into the various modern Slavic languages, of which the following are extant:Belarusian,Russian,Rusyn andUkrainian in the East;Czech,Slovak,Polish,Kashubian and theSorbian languages in the West, andBulgarian,Macedonian,Serbo-Croatian andSlovene in the South.
The period from the early centuries AD to the end of the Common Slavic period around 1000 AD was a time of rapid change, concurrent with the explosive growth of the Slavic-speaking era. By the end of this period, most of the features of the modern Slavic languages had been established.
The first historical documentation of the Slavic languages is found in isolated names and words inGreek documents starting in the 6th century AD, when Slavic-speaking tribes first came in contact with the Greek-speakingByzantine Empire.
The first continuous texts date from the late 9th century AD and were written inOld Church Slavonic—the first Slavic literary language, based on theSouth Slavic dialects spoken aroundThessaloniki inGreek Macedonia—as part of theChristianization of the Slavs bySaints Cyril and Methodius and their followers. Because these texts were written during the Common Slavic period, the language they document is close to the ancestral Proto-Slavic language and is critically important to the linguistic reconstruction of Slavic-language history.
This article covers the development of the Slavic languages from the end of the Common Slavic period (c. 1000 AD) to the present time. See the article onProto-Slavic for a description of the Proto-Slavic language of the late first millennium AD, andhistory of Proto-Slavic for the earlier linguistic history of this language.
The development into Proto-Slavic probably occurred along the southern periphery of the Proto-Balto-Slavic continuum. This is concluded from Slavichydronyms, the most archaic of which are found between the northeastern rim of the Carpathian mountains in the west, along the middleDnieper, thePripet, and theupper Dniester river in the east.[1][2]
From around 500 BCE to 200 CE, theScythians and then theSarmatians expanded their control into the forest steppe. Consequently, a fewEastern Iranian loan words, especially relating to religious and cultural practices, have been seen as evidence of cultural influences.[3] Subsequently, loan words of Germanic origin also appear. This is connected to the movement of east Germanic groups into the Vistula basin, and subsequently to the middleDnieper basin, associated with the appearance of thePrzeworsk andChernyakhov cultures, respectively.
Into the Common Era, the various Balto-Slavic dialects formed a dialect continuum stretching from the Vistula to the Don and Oka basins, and from the Baltic and upper Volga to southern Russia and northern Ukraine.[4] Beginning around 500 CE, the Slavic speakers rapidly expanded in all directions from a homeland in eastern Poland and western Ukraine. By the eighth century CE, Proto-Slavic is believed to have been spoken uniformly from Thessaloniki to Novgorod.
SeeProto-Balto-Slavic language#Notation for much more detail on the uses of the most commonly encountered diacritics for indicatingprosody (á, à, â, ã, ȁ, a̋, ā, ă) and various other phonetic distinctions (ą, ẹ, ė, š, ś, etc.) in different Balto-Slavic languages.
Two different and conflicting systems for denoting vowels are commonly in use in Indo-European and Balto-Slavic linguistics on the one hand, and Slavic linguistics on the other. In the first, vowel length is consistently distinguished with a macron above the letter, while in the latter it is not clearly indicated. The following table explains these differences:
| Vowel | IE/B-S | Slavic |
|---|---|---|
| Short front closed vowel (frontyer) | i | ĭ or ь |
| Short back closed vowel (backyer) | u | ŭ or ъ |
| Short back open vowel | a | o |
| Long front closed vowel | ī | i |
| Long back closed vowel | ū | y |
| Long front open vowel (yat) | ē | ě |
| Long back open vowel | ā | a |
For consistency, all discussions of sounds up to (but not including) Middle Common Slavic use the common Balto-Slavic notation of vowels, while discussions of Middle and Late Common Slavic (the phonology and grammar sections) and later dialects use the Slavic notation.
Other marks used within Balto-Slavic and Slavic linguistics are:
For Middle and Late Common Slavic, the following marks are used to indicateprosodic distinctions, based on the standard notation inSerbo-Croatian:
There are multiple competing systems used to indicate prosody in different Balto-Slavic languages (seeProto-Balto-Slavic language#Notation for more details). The most important for this article are:
The breakup of Common Slavic was gradual and many sound changes (such as the second regressive palatalization) still propagated throughout what must have been by then adialect continuum. However, several changes were more restricted, or had different outcomes.
The end of the Common Slavic period occurred with the loss of theyers (weak high vowels, derived from Proto-Balto-Slavic and ultimately Proto-Indo-European *i and *u). This ended the era ofsyllabic synharmony (when most, originally all, syllables wereopen) by creating large numbers ofclosed syllables. The conditions for which yers were strong and which ones weak is the same across most or all Slavic languages, but the particular outcomes are drastically different.
The clusters *tl and *dl were lost in all but West Slavic, being normally simplified to *l. Exceptions are someNorthern Russian dialects where they instead changed to *kl and *gl respectively (today only traces of this remain)[5] and theGail Valley dialect of Slovene (with traces in otherCarinthian dialects).[6][7]
For many Common Slavic dialects—including most of West Slavic, all but the northernmost portions of East Slavic, and some western parts of South Slavic—Proto-Slavic*glenited from avoiced velar plosive to avoiced velar fricative ([ɡ] →[ɣ]). This remains in some modern languages: for example, Czech and Slovakhlava/ɦlava/ⓘ, Belarusianгалава́/ɣalaˈva/ⓘ, Ukrainianголова́/ɦoloˈwa/ⓘ, which developed from Proto-Slavic*golvà. Because this change was not universal and because it did not occur for a number of East Slavic dialects (such as Belarusian and South Russian) until after the application ofHavlík's law,Shevelov (1977) calls into question early projections of this change and postulates three independent instigations of lenition, dating the earliest to before 900 CE and the latest to the early thirteenth century.[8]
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The Slavic languages are generally divided into East Slavic, South Slavic and West Slavic. For most comparative purposes, however, South Slavic does not function as a unit. Bulgarian and Macedonian, while quite similar to each other, are radically different from the other South Slavic languages in phonology and grammar. The phonology of Bulgarian and Macedonian is similar to East Slavic rather than their nearest Slavic neighbor Serbo-Croatian[citation needed] (suggesting an early East–West divide across the whole Slavic territory[citation needed], before South Slavic was separated from the rest of the Slavic languages by the spread of Hungarian and Romanian). In grammar, Bulgarian and Macedonian have developed distinctly from all other Slavic languages, eliminating nearly all case distinctions (strongly preserved elsewhere), but preserving and even strengthening the older Indo-European[citation needed] aspectual system consisting of synthetic aorist and imperfect tenses (largely eliminated elsewhere in favor of the new Slavic aspectual system).
Old Church Slavonic (OCS) data are especially important for the reconstruction of Late Common Slavic (LCS). The major exception is LCS accent, which can only be reconstructed from modern Slavic dialects.
At least six separate sound changes involving palatalization can be identified in the history of the Slavic languages:
The first palatalization (satemization) is reflected in all Balto-Slavic languages, while the rest are represented in nearly all Slavic languages. (TheOld Novgorod dialect did not undergo the second regressive palatalization, and underwent the progressive palatalization only partly.)
The outcome of the first regressive palatalization is uniform across all Slavic languages, showing that it happened fairly early. The outcome of the second regressive palatalization shows more variety. It is possible, however, that this is a later development. Many authors reconstruct a uniform outcome *ś,[9][10] which only later resolves into*s or*š. (According to Aleksandar Belić, the phonetic character of the palatalizations was uniform throughout Common Slavic and West Slavic languages developed*š later on byanalogy.[11]) In all dialects (except for Lechitic),[dz] was deaffricated to[z], but[dz] is still found in a few of the earlier Old Church Slavonic texts, where it is represented by the special letterDze (Ѕ).[12]
The following table illustrates the differences between the different dialects as far as phonetic realization of the three velar palatalizations:
| 1st regressive | 2nd regressive, Progressive | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-Slavic | k | g | x | k | g | x | |
| Common Slavic | č | ž | š | c | dz | ś | |
| East Slavic | č | ž | š | c | z | s | |
| South Slavic | |||||||
| West Slavic | Lechitic | dz | š | ||||
| Other | z | ||||||
Some dialects (in particular South Slavic), allowed the second regressive palatalization to occur across an intervening*v.[12] For example, Early Common Slavic*gvaizdā "star", which developed into Middle-Late Common Slavic*gvězda:
The outcomes of most cases of iotation are the same in all Slavic languages; for the chart of outcomes, seeIotation#Sound change.
The phonemes *ť (from earlier *tj and *gt/kt) and *ď (from earlier *dj) generally merged into various other phonemes in the various Slavic languages, but they merged with different ones in each, showing that this was still a separate phoneme in Proto-Slavic. Compare:
| Proto-Slavic | OCS | Bulg. | Mac. | S-C | Slvn. | Czech | Slvk. | Pol. | Bel. | Ukr. | Rusyn | Russ. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Written | *ť | št | št | ḱ | ć | č | c | c | c | č | č | č | č |
| IPA | *c(ː) | ʃt | ʃt | c | t͡ɕ | t͡ʃ | t͡s | t͡s | t͡s | t͡ʂ | t͡ʃ | t͡ɕ | t͡ɕ |
| Written | *ď | žd | žd | ǵ | đ | j | z | dz | dz | ž | ž | ž | ž |
| IPA | *ɟ(ː) | ʒd | ʒd | ɟ | d͡ʑ | j | z | d͡z | d͡z | ʐ | ʒ | ʒ | ʐ |
The exact pronunciation of *ť and *ď in Proto-Slavic is unclear, but they may have sounded as geminate palatal stops/cː/ and/ɟː/.[13]
The OCS and Bulgarian outcome is somewhat unusual as it is not an affricate but rather a fricative followed by a stop, having undergone metathesis. In Macedonian, the outcome is non-sibilant.
In Proto-Slavic, iotated *ľ *ň *ř contrasted with non-iotated *l *n *r, including before front vowels. This distinction was still apparent in Old Church Slavonic, although they aren't always consistently marked (least for *ř, which may have already been merging with *r' at the time the Old Church Slavonic manuscripts were written or copied). In Southwest Slavic (modern Serbo-Croatian and Slovene), this contrast remains to this day. In the other Slavic variants, however, regular *l *n *r developed palatalised variants before front vowels, and these merged with the existing iotated *ľ *ň *ř.
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In most languages (but not Serbo-Croatian or Slovene), a general palatalization of consonants before front vowels (including the front yer ь), as well as of *r in *ьr, occurred at the end of the Common Slavic period, shortly before the loss of weak yers. The loss of the weak yers made these sounds phonemic, nearly doubling the number of phonemes present. The already palatal or palatalized sounds — the outcomes of the velar palatalizations and iotation — were unchanged. Newly palatalized sounds *l' *n' *r' merged with palatal *ľ *ň *ř from iotation. However, newly palatalized *t' *d' *s' *z' did not usually merge with existing *ť *ď (from iotation) or *č *š *(d)ž (from the first palatalization of velars).
The new sounds were later depalatalized to varying degrees in all Slavic languages, merging back into the corresponding non-palatal sound. This has happened the least in Russian and Polish: before another consonant, except for l', which was always preserved, as in сколькоskol'ko "how many", and dentals before labials, as in тьмаt'ma / ćma "darkness", and before a pause for labials. r' was depalatalized early before dentals, as in чёртčort / czart "devil", but otherwise has been preserved in Polish and in many Russian dialects, as well as for some older standard speakers, who pronounce верх asver'h (cf. Polish wierzch). In many cases palatalization was analogically restored later, particularly in Russian. Russian has also introduced an unusual four-way distinction between non-palatalC, palatalC', the sequenceC'j of palatal +/j/ (from Common Slavic *Cьj with weak ь), and the sequenceCj of non-palatal +/j/ (only across a clear morpheme boundary, when a prefix is followed by a morpheme-initial/j/); however, only dentals show a clear contrast beforej.
Czech underwent a general depalatalization in the 13th century. It might be argued that Czech never underwent palatalization at all in most cases, but the Czech soundř (an unusualfricative trill) is found everywhere that *r followed by a front vowel is reconstructed in Late Common Slavic. This suggests that former *r' escaped depalatalization because it had evolved into a new sound — no longer paired with a corresponding non-palatal sound — by the time that depalatalization occurred.
The same thing happened more broadly in Polish — paired palatalized sounds occur only before vowels, but original *r' *l' *t' *d' *s' *z' are reflected differently from *r *l *t *d *s *z even word-finally and before consonants, because all six pairs had diverged by the time any depalatalization occurred. *r' evolved as in Czech, later becoming/ʐ/, but still writtenrz. *t' *d' *s' *z' evolved intoalveolopalatal consonants; and in the case of *l', non-palatal *l evolved into a back velar/ɫ/ and then further into/w/, still writtenł.
In Bulgarian, distinctively palatalized consonants are found only before/aou/. Velars are allophonically palatalized before front vowels in standard Bulgarian; the same thing happens to all consonants in Eastern Bulgarian.
Palatalization triggered a general merger of Common Slavic *y and *i. In East Slavic and Polish, the two sounds became allophones, with[ɨ] occurring after non-palatal sounds and[i] after palatal or palatalized sounds. In Czech, Slovak and South Slavic, the two sounds merged entirely (although in Czech, *i triggered palatalization oft d n prior to the merger, and in Slovak, it triggered palatalization oft d n l).
Researchers differ in whether the paired palatalized consonants should be analyzed as separate phonemes. Almost all analyses of Russian posit phonemic palatalized consonants due to their occurrence word-finally and before consonants, and due to the phonemic distinction between/C'/ and/C'j/. In Polish and Bulgarian, however, many researchers treat some or all paired palatalized consonants as underlying sequences of non-palatal consonant +/j/. Researchers who do this in Polish also generally treat the sounds[ɨ] and[i] as separate phonemes.
The two vowels ь and ъ, known as (front and back)yer, were originally pronounced as short high vowels. During the late Proto-Slavic period, a pattern emerged in these vowels which characterised a yer as either "strong" or "weak". This change is known asHavlík's law. A yer at the end of a word, or preceding a strong yer or non-yer vowel was weak, and a yer followed by a weak yer became strong. The pattern created sequences of alternating strong and weak yers within each word: in a sequence of yers, every odd yer encountered was weak, every even yer was strong.
The name *sъmolьnьskъ (the Russian city ofSmolensk) is shown here as an example, with strong yers inbold and weak yers initalics.
During the time immediately following the Common Slavic period, weak yers were gradually deleted. A deleted front yer ь often left palatalization of the preceding consonant as a trace. Strong yers underwent lowering and became mid vowels, but the outcomes differ somewhat across the various Slavic languages. Slovene in particular retains a distinct outcome that did not merge with any other vowels, albeit originally only in unstressed syllables, and Bulgarian has an outcome that merged only with nasal ǫ.
Compare:[14]
| Proto-Slavic | OCS | Bulg. | Mac. | S-C | Slvn. | Czech | Slvk. | Pol. | USorb | LSorb | Bel. | Russ. | Ukr. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| strong *ь | ь | e, ă | e | a | ǝ,a | e | e (a,á,o) | 'e | e | e | 'e | 'e | e |
| strong *ъ | ъ | ă | o | a | ǝ,a | e | o (e,a,á) | e | e | e | o | o | o |
| "dog" | "day" | "dream" | "moss" | |
| Middle Proto-Slavic | *pьsь̏ ~ *pьsá | *dь̏nь ~ *dь̏ne | *sъnъ̏ ~ *sъná | *mъ̏xъ/mъxъ̏ ~ *mъxá/mъ̏xa |
| Late Proto-Slavic | *pь̃sь ~ *pьsà | *dь̑nь ~ *dьnȅ | *sъ̃nъ ~ *sъnà | *mъ̂xъ/mъ̃xъ ~ *mъxà/*mъxȁ |
| Bulgarian | pes ~ pséta, pésove (pl.) | den ~ déna, dni (pl.) | săn ~ sắništa (pl.) | măx ~ mắxa, mắxove (pl.) |
| Serbo-Croatian | pȁs ~ psȁ | dȃn ~ dȃna | sȁn ~ snȁ | mȃh ~ mȁha |
| Slovene | pǝ̀s ~ psà | dȃn ~ dnẹ̑/dnẹ̑va | sǝ̀n ~ snà | mȃh ~ mȃha/mahȗ; mèh ~ méha |
| Macedonian | pes ~pl. pci, pcišta | den ~pl. denovi, dni | son ~pl. soništa, sništa | mov (uncount. n.) |
| Russian | p'os (< p'es) ~ psa | d'en' ~ dn'a | son ~ sna | mox ~ mxa/móxa |
| Czech | pes ~ psa | den ~ dne | sen ~ snu | mech ~ mechu |
| Slovak | pes ~ psa | deň ~ dňa | sen ~ sna | mach ~ machu |
| Ukrainian | pes ~ psa | den' ~ dn'a | son ~ snu | moh ~ mohu |
| Polish | pies ~ psa | dzień ~ dnia | sen ~ snu | mech ~ mchu |
Deletion of weak yers created many new closed syllables as well as many of the unusual consonant clusters that characterize the Slavic languages today. Many cases of "spurious vowels" also appeared because a yer had been weak in one form of a word but strong in another, causing it to disappear in some forms of the word but not others. For example, the word for "dog" was *pьsъ in the nominative singular, but *pьsa in the genitive singular, with differing patterns of strong and weak yers. Following the deletion of weak yers and lowering of strong yers, this resulted in nominative Czechpes, Polishpies, Serbo-Croatianpas, but genitivepsa (in all three).
In some cases, however, deletion of weak yers would lead to an awkward consonant cluster such as word-initialrt-,ln- ormx- (as in the example of *mъxъ "moss" above), with asonorant consonant on the outside of the cluster, a violation of the principle of rising sonority. These clusters were handled in various ways:[15]
A similar problem occurred with awkward word-final clusters such as-tr,-gn or-sm. These originated from words like *větrъ "wind" or *ognь "fire", where the cluster occurred syllable-initially and there was no sonority violation. Again various outcomes are found in different languages, largely parallel to the above outcomes for word-initial clusters. In this case, when a cluster needed to be broken up, a strong yer was inserted as afill vowel between the two consonants.
Yers before/j/ are known astense yers and were handled specially. In languages other than Russian, they were sometimes raised, with *ьj *ъj becoming *ij *yj regardless of position. In Russian, the opposite sometimes happened, with *ij *yj sometimes lowering to *ьj *ъj, subsequently evolving normally as strong or weak yers. In languages other than Russian, resulting sequences of *ijV or *yjV may contract to a single vowel (especially in Czech). The outcomes are not consistent and depend on various factors. For example, *ъj in long adjectives becomes contractedí in Czech, but stressedoj, unstressedyj (ăj in the old literary pronunciation and some dialects) in Russian.
In Russian, when the yer in *ьj was weak, the result was a sequence of palatal consonant +/j/, which remained distinct from regular palatal consonants. In other languages, either the sequence compressed into a single palatal consonant or the palatal consonant was depalatalized. E.g. from Common Slavic *ustьje "estuary", when the yer was treated as weak the result is Russianúst'e[ˈustʲje], Polishujście[ujɕtɕe], Sloveneûstje; when treated as strong, the result is Czechústí (with contraction of *ije), Bulgarianústie[ˈustie].
Proto-Slavic had eliminated most diphthongs creating either long monophthongs or nasal vowels. But it still possessed sequences of a short vowel followed by *l or *r and another consonant, the so-called "liquid diphthongs". These sequences went counter to the law of open syllables and were eliminated by the end of the Proto-Slavic period, but differently in each dialect.
The situation for the mid vowels *e and *o is relatively straightforward. The South Slavic dialects usedmetathesis: the liquid and vowel switched places, and the vowels were lengthened to *ě and *a respectively. The East Slavic languages instead underwent a process known aspleophony: a copy of the vowel before the liquid consonant was inserted after it. However, *el became *olo rather than *ele. The situation in West Slavic is more mixed. Czech and Slovak follow the South Slavic pattern and have metathesis with lengthening. Polish and Sorbian underwent metathesis but without any lengthening, and the northwestern Lechitic languages (Pomeranian,Slovincian andPolabian) retained *or without any metathesis at all.
| Proto-Slavic | OCS | Bulg. | Mac. | S-C | Slvn. | Czech | Slvk. | Pol. | Kash. | Bel. | Russ. | Ukr. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| *el | lě | le/lja | le | lije/le/li | le | le | lie | le | le | olo | olo | olo, oli |
| *ol | la | la | la | la | la | la | la | ło | ło | |||
| *er | rě | re/rja | re | rije/re/ri | re | ře | rie | rze | rze | ere | ere | ere |
| *or | ra | ra | ra | ra | ra | ra | ra | ro | ar | oro | oro | oro, ori |
The evolution of the liquid diphthongs with high vowels in the various daughter languages is more diverse. In some West Slavic and South Slavic languages, syllabic sonorants appear, and in others (e.g. Polish), either vowel-consonant or consonant-vowel sequences appear depending on the context, which is most easily derived by assuming an earlier stage with syllabic sonorants (with the former occurrence of ь or ъ transferred into palatalization or lack thereof). East Slavic, however, consistently has vowel-consonant sequences withe oro as the vowel, which can be easily derived by assuming that the liquid diphthongs continued unchanged until the changes involving yers (assuming that the yers in these sequences were always treated as if strong).
As a result, there is a divergence of opinion, with some scholars assuming that the high-vowel liquid diphthongs evolved into syllabic sonorants early in the Common Slavic period (even before the metathesis of the mid-vowel liquid diphthongs), while others assume that the change to syllabic sonorants was one of the last changes in the Common Slavic period and did not occur at all in many languages (e.g. East Slavic).
Old Church Slavonic writes these as *lь, *lъ, *rь, *rъ, as if metathesis had occurred. However, various internal evidence indicates that these behaved differently from original Proto-Slavic *lь, *lъ, *rь, *rъ, and hence were probably actually pronounced as syllabic sonorants. (This is also consistent with evidence from later languages.) In the manuscripts, only a single vowel is found in this position, usually *ъ but also consistently *ь in a few manuscripts. This appears to indicate that the palatal(ized) syllabic sonorants had merged into the non-palatal ones.[16]
The syllabic sonorants are retained unchanged in Czech and Slovak. In Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian and Slovene, syllabic r is retained but an epenthetic vowel was inserted before syllabic l. Bulgarian inserted an epenthetic ǎ before both. Serbo-Croatian also underwentl-vocalization.
East Slavic reflects original *ьr and *ъr aser andor respectively, but merges *ьl and *ъl asol (Proto-Slavic *vьlna > East Slavicвълна > Russianволна), similarly to the merger of *el and *ol asolo.L-vocalization later occurred in Belarusian and Ukrainian: for example, Proto-Slavic*vь̑lkъ > Old East Slavicвълкъ > Ukrainianвовк/wowk/, Belarusianвоўк/vowk/.
Nasal vowels were initially retained in most Slavic dialects, but soon underwent further changes. Nasality is preserved in modern Polish, as well as in some peripheral dialects ofSlovene (e.g. theCarinthian dialect group) andBulgarian/Macedonian (e.g. aroundThessaloniki andKastoria). In other Slavic languages, however, the nasal vowels lost their nasality and merged with other vowels. The outcomes are as follows:[17]
| Proto-Slavic | OCS | Bulg. | Mac. | S-C | Slvn. | Czech | Slvk. | Pol. | Bel. | Russ. | Ukr. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| *ę | ę | e | ja, e | e | ẹ̄ | a, ě | a, ä | ię | ja | ja | ja |
| *ę̄ | ę̄ | ē | á, í | ia | ią | ||||||
| *ǫ | ǫ | ǎ | ja, a | u | ọ̄ | u | u | ę | u | u | u |
| *ǭ | ǭ | ū | ou | ú | ą |
The phonetic realization of *ě was also subject to phonetic variation across different dialects. In Early Proto-Slavic, *ě was originally distinguished from *e primarily by length. Later on, it appears that initially it was lowered to a low-front vowel[æ] and then diphthongized to something like[iæ]. This is still reflected asia orja (i.e./a/ with palatalization of the previous consonant) in certain contexts before hard consonants in Bulgarian and Polish; but in most areas it was raised to[ie]. This generally proceeded further in one of three directions:
All three possibilities are found as variants within the Serbo-Croatian area, respectively known as theijekavian,ekavian andikavian dialects. An ijekavian dialect served as the basis of almost all the literary Serbo-Croatian forms (all except literary Serbian as used specifically within Serbia itself, which is ekavian). These dialects have shortje, longije (often pronounced as[jeː]). The ijekavian dialects of Serbo-Croatian are in fact the only Slavic languages that consistently preserve a reflex of *ě distinct from all other Common Slavic sounds.[19] (Elsewhere, at most only some cases of *ě, e.g. those in stressed syllables, have a distinct reflex.)
In cases where the reflex has remained as a diphthong, it has most commonly developed to[je], often followed by merger of the[j] with a previous consonant to form a palatal or palatalized consonant. In Czech, for example, the reflex of *ě is sometimes still spelledě, but this in fact indicates[je] after labials, and[e] aftert d n, which become pronounced as palatal sounds[cɟɲ]; in other cases the reflex is simplye.
InOld Russian, the reflex of *ě simplified to[e], but this did not cause a merger with *e in stressed syllables, which was pronounced[ɛ]. Later, this/ɛ/ (also including reflexes of the strong front yer) changed into/jo/ (i.e./o/ with palatalization of the preceding consonant) when not followed by a palatalized consonant: cf. modern Russian лёд/lʲod/ 'ice' (loans from Church Slavonic do not display this change: небо "sky", крест "cross", перст "finger" in elevated style).[20] The result of the sound change may be expressed in the present-day spelling by means of a diaeresis over the lettere (ё), but generally isn't. In contrast, the sound change did not affect the reflex of originalyat, which continued to be pronounced as[e], eventually merging with the surviving unaffected instances of/ɛ/ as late as the 1700s (seen, respectively, in the words хлеб/xlʲeb/ 'bread' and печь/pʲet͡ɕ/ 'oven').[21] Originalyat continued to be represented distinctly from/e/ resulting from other sources in spelling until thespelling reforms of 1918, and is still distinguished in someNorthern Russian dialects.
Similarly, in Ukrainian, the reflex of *ě simplified toi[i], but this did not cause a merger with either *e or *i in stressed syllables, because both sounds developed to a phonemey[ɪ]. (However, in some instances, former *o is also reflected asi.)
The following table shows the development of *ě in various languages:
| Proto-Slavic | OCS | Bulg. | Mac. | S-C | Slvn. | Czech | Slvk. | Pol. | Bel. | Russ. | Ukr. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| *ě | ě | ja/e | e | (i)je, e, i | е | ě, í | (i)e | ie, ia | e | e | i |
The modern Slavic languages differ greatly in the occurrence of the prosodic phenomena of phonemicvowel length,accent andtone, all of which existed in Common Slavic (CS), ranging from total preservation (Serbo-Croatian) to total loss (Polish). However, the surface occurrence of length, accent and/or tone in a given language does not necessarily correspond with the extent to which the corresponding CS phenomena can be reconstructed. For example, although all of the standard Serbo-Croatian literary forms have phonemic tone, they cannot be used to reconstruct Late CS tone; only some of the non-standard dialects (e.g.Chakavian) are useful in this regard. Similarly, although Macedonian has (marginal) phonemic accent, this does not continue the CS accent position. Contrariwise, although modern Polish lacks vowel length, some vowel quality differences (e.g. in nasal vowels) reflect former length differences.
Phonemic tone is found only in western South Slavic languages — Serbo-Croatian and some Slovene dialects (including one of the two literary standards). Phonemic length is found in Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, Czech and Slovak. Phonemic accent is found in Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, the East Slavic languages, Bulgarian, the northernKashubian dialects, marginally in Macedonian.
In terms of which modern languages preserve which CS prosodic features, it is important to understand that length, tone and accent are intricately tied together. Middle CS did not have phonemic length, and Late CS length evolved largely from certain tonal and accentual changes. (In addition, some long vowels evolved from contraction of vowels across/j/ orcompensatory lengthening before a lost yer, especially in Czech and Slovak.) Hence length distinctions in some languages (e.g. Czech) may correspond to tonal distinctions in other languages (e.g. Serbo-Croatian).
As mentioned above, Middle Common Slavic (MCS) had a three-way tonal/length distinction on accented syllables (long rising, long falling, short). Long rising and falling tones continue Balto-Slavic acute and circumflex, respectively. Late Common Slavic (LCS) developed at first a four-way distinction, where rising and falling tones could occur in both short and long syllables, as in modern Serbo-Croatian. Later changes of a complex nature produced the prosodic phenomena found in the various modern languages.
In general, the history of Slavic accentuation is extremely complex and still incompletely understood. The following is a summary of the most important changes in LCS:[9][23]
Note that steps 3, 4 and 6 can all be viewed as types ofcompensatory lengthening before a lost (or about-to-be-lost) yer.
Numerous further developments occur in individual languages. Some of the most notable ones are:
Only some conservative Serbo-Croatian dialects (e.g.Chakavian) maintain the original accentual system unchanged. Some Slovene dialects (see below) maintain all original properties of the accentual system, but with various changes in multisyllabic words.
Slovene shows large dialectal diversity for its relatively small area of distribution. For example, only the central dialects and one of the two literary standards maintain tone, and some of the northwest dialects maintain original nasality. In the dialects maintaining tone, the prosody of monosyllables agrees closely with the most conservative Serbo-Croatian dialects (e.g. Chakavian). In multisyllabic words, all non-final stressed vowels were lengthened (acute and neoacute becoming long rising, while circumflex and original short become long falling), and all non-final unstressed vowels were shortened, which produced a prosodic pattern not unlike that found in modernItalian. Length remained distinctive in final syllables only. But prior to this, various shifts happened:
In West Slavic, esp. in Czech, a number of originally short vowels in monosyllables are lengthened. The conditions for this lengthening are incompletely understood and seem to involve good deal of analogy and dialect mixing.[26]
Note that the overall effect of all these changes is that either the MCS acute, MCS circumflex or both have ended up shortened in various languages in various circumstances, while the LCS neoacute has generally remained long.[27]
| Accent | Common Slavic | Chakavian | Slovene | Czech | Slovak | Bulgarian | Russian |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Circumflex | *gôrdъ "town" | grȃd | grȃd "castle" | hrad "castle" | hrad "castle" | grad-ǎ́t "the town" | górod |
| Acute | *pórgъ "doorsill" | prȁg | pràg (gen.prága) | práh (gen.prahu) | prah | prág-ǎt "the doorsill" | poróg |
| Neoacute | *kõrľь "king" | králj | králj | král (gen.krále) | kráľ | králj-at "the king" | koról' |
The lexical stock of the Slavic languages also includes a number ofloanwords from the languages of various tribes and peoples that the Proto-Slavic speakers came into contact with. These include mostly Indo-European speakers, chieflyGermanic (Gothic andOld High German), speakers ofVulgar Latin or some early Romance dialects,Middle Greek and, to a much lesser extent,Eastern Iranian (mostly pertaining to religious sphere) andCeltic.
Many terms of Greco-Roman cultural provenience have been diffused into Slavic by Gothic mediation, and analysis has shown that Germanic borrowings into Slavic show at least 4 distinct chronological strata, and must have entered Proto-Slavic in a long period.
Of non-Indo-European languages, possible connections have been made to variousTurkic andAvar, but their reconstruction is very unreliable due to the scarcity of the evidence and the relatively late attestation of both Slavic and Turkic languages. When the Turkic tribal union ofVolga Bulgars andKhazars conquered territories in the Ukrainian steppe belt between the 6th and 8th centuries AD, it is possible that such Turkisms askahan 'kagan, ruler',bahatyr 'hero', andban 'high rank' and the suffix-čij found their way into the Common Slavic language.[29]
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