History of Slavonic Languages

[Neil Bermel]

David Hart's _Topics in the Structure of Russian_ (Slavica, 1996) mostly
deals with synchronic matters, but  has a chapter on the history of Russian
as well.   The title isn't promising, but the book is engagingly written,
and explains matters clearly without presuming prior knowledge.

In defense of Schenker's _Dawn of Slavic_: yes, it's a bit dense in places,
but I've assigned selected readings from it in an undergraduate course
("Introduction to the Slavonic Languages") and the reactions from students
were good.  The cultural background he provides to the development of
alphabets, etc. is excellent, and there are numerous interesting and
amusing quotations.  The explanations of sound change presume more
background knowledge than the average undergraduate student of Russian has,
but there's no rule that every reader has to read the whole book....

Neil


----------------------------------------------------
Neil Bermel
University of Sheffield
Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies
Sheffield S10 2TN England
+44 (0)114 222 7405
+44 (0)114 222 7416 fax

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