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The law of open syllables refers to a series of Late Common Slavic rules that specified that syllables must end in a vowel, rather than a consonant. Since many originally inherited syllables did not end in a vowel, the open-syllable law led to significant changes in the shape of the language.Open syllables and rising sonority in SlavicThe law of open syllables refers to a series of Late Common Slavic rules that specified that syllables must end in a vowel, rather than a consonant. Since many originally inherited syllables did not end in a vowel, …

This article reviews the environment in which metathesis occurred in Common Slavic liquid diphthongs. The difference between initial and internal liquid diphthongs is reviewed, and the reflexes of initial diphthongs in the two major dialect zones are presented. Next there is a presentation of liquid diphthong metathesis in internal position, and the split between two large Slavic zones is presented. Roman Jakobson’s division of liquid diphthong evolution into five major zones is discussed…

This article deals with Slavic contraction, which specifies the deletion of the intervocalic glide j and the change of the two vowels that surrounded the glide into a new long vowel. Slavic languages were very variable in their development of contraction. West Slavic, and especially Czech, had the most extensive development of contractions, which can be understood in the light of the West Slavic development of vowel length as the single most important prosodic feature, following the loss of pitch and st…

This article reviews the topic of Common Slavic palatalizations, starting with an explanation of the difference between palatal and palatalized consonants and the inherent ambiguity of the term “palatalization.” Next, there is a review of the three velar palatalizations and the jot palatalizations of Common Slavic. In each case, the processes are categorized into their subtypes and geographical zones. After each type of palatalization, tables present the major Slavic reflexes of each sound change.Introduction: Palatal and palatalized consonantsSince Common Slavic and the…

This article describes the Common Slavic topic of syllabic synharmonization and the various sound changes that occurred for synharmonization to prevail in Common Slavic. Generally speaking, when the consonants and vowels of a syllable disagreed in their high or low tonality, changes ensued to raise the tonality of the lower segments. In the case of low-tonality consonants followed by high-tonality vowels, this took the form of many sorts of palatalizations, which gave the syllable a unifo…