The Layering of East Slavic.

A paper by Michael S. Flier (Harvard Ukrainian Studies 35 1-4 [2017-2018]: 31-42) begins by quoting Roman Szporluk on the origins of Ukrainian ethnic and cultural identity and asks “If the imagined community began to emerge in the late eighteenth century, when did the Ukrainian vernacular begin to delimit itself vis-à-vis its neighbors?” Flier goes on to quote George Shevelov to the effect that “a continuum has existed from the earliest local changes within Common Slavic to the present,” then gets to the meat of his paper: It is one thing to worry about labels, but it is quite another to examine the typology of the linguistic systems on East Slavic territory and uncover the relationship among specific changes. The goal is to establish not simply a list of distinctive characteristics, as Shevelov would have it, but to reveal a hierarchy of change and therefore a more accurate evaluation of linguistic data.[6] Thus, we are not as interested in registering Change A and Change B as we are…