SOME ASPECTS OF THE EVOLUTION OF THE NOVGOROD DIALECT FROM THE LATE 16TH TO THE MIDDLE 20TH CENTURY

The article describes some of the features of the Novgorod dialect that have changed or lost from the end of the 16th century to the middle of the 20th century. The study is based on handwritten document of the late 16th century Book of Old and New Servage in Novgorod presented to Clerc Dmitry Alyabyev in 1597–1598. (RGADA, fond 1144, register 1, No 1 and 4) with the use of materials from manuscripts of the first half of the 17th century, the dialectological atlas of the Russian language and descriptions of Russian dialects of the late 19th — early 20th centuries. 1. Until the second half of the 17th century the sound [i] was a reflex of Old Russian *ě in stressed syllables. Beginning from the middle of the 19th century this particularity began to be lost, so by the middle of the 20th century in Novgorod dialects in accordance with the etymologic *ě sounds mainly [e]. 2. The change in the vocalism of the second pre-stressed and post-stressed syllables began in the first half of the 17th century, but in the second and subsequent pre-stressed syllables the process was slow, and in the poststressed syllables it was more active. 3. At the end of the 16th century the phoneme /v/ was represented in weak positions in two ways — both with the sounds [w] and [f]. In the first half of the 17th century only [f] remains. 4. From Novgorod dialects gradually disappeared the preposition «uv». 5. At the end of the XVIth century two types of case syncretism in the singular *ā-declension coexisted: Gen.-Dat.-Loc. with the ending -ѣ (yat’) and Gen.-Dat.-Loc. with the ending -y/-i. In modern Novgorod dialects there is a second type, which became the only one by the beginning of the 18th century.