Palatalization in Old Church Slavonic

Jan 30, 2015 by

Palatalization in Old Church Slavonic

[For a discussion of the image, see the post in the LanguageHat blog.] In our examination of the Old Church Slavonic (OCS) declension system, we have noticed some peculiar consonant alternations, for example: člověkъ ‘man’...

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Birch Bark Letters and the Second Slavic Palatalization, part 3

Sep 14, 2011 by

At the end of the previous posting, we’ve reached a conundrum: the Old Novgorod dialect must have diverged from the rest of the Slavic family early enough to avoid the application of the Second Slavic Palatalization, yet not...

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Birch Bark Letters and the Second Slavic Palatalization, part 2

Sep 13, 2011 by

At the end of the previous posting, I said that the Old Novgorod KѢLЪ, the Modern Russian CELYJ and the English whole are all cognates, but how are they related to each other? This is where the Second Slavic Palatalization comes in....

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Birch Bark Letters and the Second Slavic Palatalization, part 1

Sep 13, 2011 by

While the second part of this posting’s title may sound scary to some of you, bear with me and you will discover one of the most fascinating puzzles of Slavic historical linguistics. But let’s concern ourselves with the...

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The magic of /i/

Jul 1, 2010 by

At the end of the last posting, I mentioned that both the -o- spelling of /i/ in women and the -ti- spelling of /sh/ in revolution are a result of the special magic of /i/. It is time to look at those sound changes that can be...

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