A New Historical Grammar of the East Slavic Languages
Volume 1: Introduction and Phonology
Stefan M. Pugh
University of St Andrews
A New Historical Grammar of the East Slavic Languages marks a new approach to the study of this subject, in a number of ways. It is compact, does not repeat the history of East Slavic (in this case, the phonology) as it has been presented before, and is aimed at an audience already familiar with the basics.
The study addresses the phonemic inventories of the East Slavic systems, and introduces the question of functional load in East Slavic in a systematic fashion. Another approach taken is an areal one: how and where do various key vocalic and consonantal features occur across the geo-linguistic continuum? The study of East Slavic is also not undertaken in isolation, but includes Polish in reference to some crucial phonological features – a language that is connected to the western reaches of East Slavic geographically as well as linguistically. Finally, the study is broadened to include what many are now accepting as a fourth East Slavic language: Rusyn.
Stefan M. Pugh is Reader in Russian at the University of St Andrews (Scotland). He has published widely on East Slavic languages and linguistics, including Testament to Ruthenian: a Linguistic Analysis of the Smotryc'kyj Variant (1996), Ukrainian: A Comprehensive Grammar, with J. Ian Press (1999), and Systems in Contact, System in Motion: the Assimilation of Russian Verbs in the Baltic Finnic Languages of Russia.
Table of Contents:
Abbreviations
Notes on Transliteration
Chapter One: Preliminaries and History
1.0 Introduction
1.1 Major Historical Events in the Linguistic History of East Slavic
1.2 Written Languages and the Codification of the East Slavic Literary Languages
1.3 The History of the East Slavic Literary Languages: a Schematic Overview
Chapter Two: The Vowels
2.0 The (Proto-) Indo-European Sources of the Common Slavic Vocalic System
2.1 The Vowel System of Common Slavic and the Emergence of East Slavic
2.2 From Common East Slavic to the Modern Languages: Systemic Equilibrium?
2.3 An Areal Description of Key Vocalic Features of East Slavic
Chapter Three: The Consonants
3.0 The Consonants of Common Slavic: Indo-European Origins
3.1 Stops, Spirants, and Sonants
3.2 Simplification, Merger, and Expansion: from Indo-European to Common Slavic
3.3 The Emergence of the East Slavic System
3.4 An Areal Description of Key Consonantal Features of East Slavic
Chapter Four: Conclusions
4.0 Preliminaries
4.1 The Vowel and Consonant Systems
4.2 Functional Load
4.3 The Place of Polish
4.4 A Final Word on the Phonological Continuum
4.5 Future Volumes: Morphology
Selected Bibliography
ISBN 9783895860133 (Hardbound). LINCOM Studies in Slavic Linguistics 27. 135pp. 2007.
