ABSTRACT
Within the Indo-European family, the Slavonic languages form a compact and, morphologically homogeneous group with a large common stock of basic vocabulary. Phonologically, the individual languages show more variation; the nasal vowels of Common Slavonic have been retained only in Polish, and tone is found only in Serbo-Croat and Slovene. The degree of homogeneity suggests that dialectal variation from a common Slavonic stock is fairly recent. This common parent language seems to have persisted into the early years of the first millennium A D ; by about 600 the individual Slavonic languages were beginning to take shape. W hen the Old Church Slavonic literary language appears in the ninth century some of its characteristic features are identifiably South Slavonic. In the main, however, this literary language is still close to Common Slavonic. The original diffusion of Common Slavonic into Eastern, W estern, and South ern dialects remains the basis for contem porary classification of the Slavonic languages: Eastern Slavonic comprises Russian, U krainian, and Belorussian; W estern Slavonic, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Lusatian (also known as Sorbian or W endish, with two literary and spoken norms, U pper and Lower); South Slavonic comprises Serbo-Croat, Slovene, Bulgarian, and Macedonian. Extinct Slavonic languages include Polabian (Lechic group of West Slavonic).
