Explorations in Byelorussian Historical Bilingual Dialectology and Onomastics

The study of Byelorussian dialectal development can be aided by considering it in the context of developments in other languages which were encountered by Byelorussian speakers--not only Russian & Ukrainian, but less closely related (& even unrelated) languages as well: (Polish, Church Slavonic, German, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romany, Yiddish, Karaite, etc.). Numerous examples show that such a bi- or multilingual approach to Byelorussian dialectology & onomastics (toponymics, in particular) can be quite useful in establishing the chronology of linguistic changes & the geographical extent of those changes which affected more than 1 language. The article's principle focus is on the historical phonological process (voicing-devoicing, prothesis, etc.). External historical factors, especially other writing systems, are interrelated with internal linguistic factors. 1 Table. P. Malan