Old Church Slavonic as a Key Factor to the Diachronic Typology of the Slavic Languages
Old Church Slavonic as a Key Factor to the Diachronic Typology of the Slavic Languages

Summary/Abstract: The object of diachronic typology can be summarised as the identification and study of common unidirectional processes related to the transformation of the system of mutually determined features structuring the language type. In the case of the Slavic languages such an ancestral language is Common Slavic. Of all the languages with written monuments the closest to Common Slavic (more exactly, to the later period of Common Slavic following the two essential phonological trends, the tendency for open syllables and syllable synharmony) is Old Church Slavonic (Old Bulgarian). That is why its significance for diachronic typological studies cannot be debated. In the following a tentative survey of the different available typologies of the Slavic languages will be presented with due regard to this earliest literary language of the Slavs.

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