When is Orthography Not Just Orthography? The Case of the Novgorod Birchbark Letters

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt:In this paper, I argue that the jer-letter merger in the corpus of the Novgorod birchbark letters is entirely explicable in terms of the underlying phonology of the Old Novgorod dialect. In particular, I propose that the outcome of the jer shift in the Old Novgorod dialect was affected by a Finnic substratum.

12. letno srečanje Združenja za slovansko jezikoslovje / 12th Slavic Linguistics Society Annual Meeting / XII ежегодная конференция Общества славянского языкознания

“…The East Slavic spread involved both migrations and language shift from Baltic and Finno-Ugric languages. A Finno-Ugric substrate is clearly visible in Russian (Kiparsky 1969) and especially in Old Novgrodian as attested in the birch bark documents (Dombrowski 2016). After the introduction of Christianity and Cyrillic literacy linked with it, the spread of East Slavic was a typical case of prestige language expansion.…”