The present handbook seeks to provide a systematic review of relevant topics and research about them in Slavic linguistics. The review is approach-neutral and involves synchronic and diachronic perspectives. The goal of each chapter is to identify and review the following: (a) the linguistic features pertinent to Slavic languages, (b) the development of these features from Proto-Slavic to the present-day Slavic languages (to the degree appropriate for the topic of the chapter), (c) the main findings in historical and ongoing research devoted to these features, and (d) a summary of what the state of the art in the field is and what the directions of further research will be. This volume is a handbook. Just as in any handbook, here too one provides succinct and accessible information (rather than in-depth analyses).

While remaining accessible to a broad circle of scholars and students in the fields of linguistics and Slavic studies, the present volume caters in particular to the following three readerships. First, it offers a review of main areas of inquiry in Slavic studies to the current and prospective students of Slavic linguistics. The brisk introductions to the field provided in each chapter are thus meant to be teasers that would help these students to select the field or fields of their specialization. Second, nowadays Slavic linguists typically specialize in one or several rather narrow areas of inquiry. The chapters discussing the fields other than one’s own offer to these scholars an accessible introduction and a chance to broaden their horizons in Slavic studies. Finally, in contrast to the previous group, non-Slavic linguists may be interested in the chapters of their specialization. For example, a scholar of inflection in Baltic or Germanic languages may want to get some introductory information about that field in Slavic languages.

Given its intent and target readership, chapters are approach-neutral. Similarly, they deploy broadly known terminology. This makes the text accessible to every student of Slavic studies and linguistics, no matter what theoretical background they may have.

Just like any field of human inquiry, the field of Slavic linguistics is multifaceted, with lines of investigation meandering through countless problems and topics. This made the task of selecting the topics to be included in a volume of a limited length difficult if not impossible. Cognizant of the aforementioned complexity of the problem, we attempted to include the most prominent problems and topics that are of relevance for the intended readership of this volume. Needless to say, other editors might have selected a different set of topics.

Authors for each chapter have been selected, without fear or favor, as established experts in their particular fields. It is important that in addition to the inclusivity of the subject matter (which comes with the territory) the volume remains temporally and geographically inclusive. The former can be seen in the fact that the volume includes early, mid, and late career scholars of Slavic studies. In a way, it gives insight into the past, present, and future of Slavic linguistics. The range of places from which the authors come testifies to the latter. While, as is usual in publications in English, authors from countries like the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom constitute the core of the contributors, there are authors from Germany and Austria, where Slavic studies are exceptionally strong, but also from other European countries, such as Belgium and Spain, and from Japan. Last, but definitely not least, there are authors from the Slavia – from Croatia, Czech Republic, Montenegro, Poland, Russia, and Serbia. This is particularly valuable given that, despite recent rapprochement processes, research traditions in English-speaking countries and those around the Slavic world still seem to live separate lives.

The volume has the following structure. The first six chapters are devoted to phonology. Draga Zec, Cornell University, discusses Word Stress. Irena Sawicka (Copernicus University, Toruń) presents Vocalism, and Peter Jurgec (University of Toronto) discusses Consonantism. Alexei Kochetov of the same University is next with his analysis of the Syllable Structure. Next, Darya Kavitskaya, of University of California Berkeley, addresses Phonologically Conditioned Alternations. The final chapter in this section, penned by Radek Šimík (Charles University, Prague), is devoted to Prosodic Reflexes of Information Structure.

The next section comprises four chapters focusing on inflectional morphology and two exploring lexical morphology. Marek Majer (University of Łódź) discusses Declensions, while Ian Press (University of St. Andrews) presents Conjugations. Hagen Pitsch (Leipzig University) writes about Tense and Mood Forms. In a final chapter, Stephen Dickey (University of Kansas) explores Aspect in Verbs. In the first chapter devoted to lexical morphology, Frank Y. Gladney (University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana) discusses Lexical Derivation. The section on morphology is concluded by the chapter on Lexical Composition written by Mate Kapović (University of Zagreb).

A cohort of chapters treating syntax is next. Jana Willer-Gold (University College London) discusses Agreement. In the next chapter, Barbara Citko (University of Washington) analyses Wh-Dependencies. Milan Mihaljević (Old Church Slavonic Institute, Zagreb) is next with his presentation of Coordination and Subordination. In the following chapter, Steven Franks (Indiana University) discusses Numerals and Quantity Expressions. Then, there is a chapter by Franc Lanko Marušič, Petra Mišmaš, and Rok Žaucer (University of Nova Gorica) about the Placement and Ordering of the (En)clitics. Nerea Madariaga (University of the Basque Country) analyses Secondary Predication in the next chapter. Luka Szucsich (Humboldt University, Berlin) is next with his discussion of Polarity. Then Alina Israeli (American University) presents Null Subjects. Jasmina Milićević (Dalhousie University) presents Voice in the next chapter. Finally, Elena Titov (University College London) discusses Morphosyntactic Reflexes of Information Structure.

The next section presents three chapters devoted to the lexicon. Valentina Apresjan (Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan) and Alexei Shmelev (Moscow State Pedagogical University) discuss the Structure of the Lexicon. Rajna Dragićević (University of Belgrade) and Milan Ivanović (University of Montenegro) analyze Lexical Semantics. Rajna Dragićević (University of Belgrade) and Danko Šipka (Arizona State University) are next with the presentation of Lexical Borrowing.

The next section includes chapters addressing sociolinguistics, broadly understood, and geographical approaches. Serge Sharoff (University of Leeds) and Nenad Ivanović (University of Belgrade) discuss Sociolinguistic Variation. Danko Šipka (Arizona State University) and Mladen Uhlik (University of Ljubljana) address False Cognates. Joseph Schallert (University of Toronto) is next with his presentation of Dialectal Fragmentation. In the following chapter Dieter Stern (Ghent University) discusses Language Contacts. Next, Motoki Nomachi (Hokkaido University, Sapporo) addresses Slavic Micro-Languages. Oksana Laleko (New Paltz University) addresses Heritage Language Forms. There follow two chapters on epilinguistic issues of relevance in Slavic languages, both penned by Daniel Bunčić (University of Cologne). The first discusses Scripts, the second Orthographies.

The final section is devoted to prominent applied linguistic fields in Slavic linguistics. In the first chapter, Tanya Ivanova-Sullivan (University of California Los Angeles) and Irina A. Sekerina (City University of New York) discuss Psycholinguistics and Language Acquisition. In the second, Tomaž Erjavec (Jožef Štefan Institute, Ljubljana) addresses Natural Language Processing.

The authors in this volume were encouraged by the editors to use the terms all prospective readers of the volume will be familiar with. All terms used without defining them are intended to be approach-neutral and in common use. The editors have sent a list of such terms to the authors. Anything that is not likely to be familiar to every Slavist and linguist who is a potential reader of the volume is defined in a footnote the first time it is used. For some concepts, where there were competing terms, the editors decided on the following: Belarusian (rather than Belorussian, Belarusan), Finnic (rather than Fennic), Finno-Ugric (rather than Ugro-Finnic), jer (rather than yer; definitely not jor), Kashubian (rather than Cassubian), Lekhitic (rather than Lechitic), Lower Sorbian, Upper Sorbian (rather than Lower Lusatian, Upper Lusatian; not Wendish), Slavic (rather than Slavonic); but: Church Slavonic, Old Church Slavonic. In the politically charged issue of Serbo-Croatian (Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian) we left the decision what to use to the authors. All examples are transliterated into the Latin script, translated, and glossed, where appropriate. The following conventions were used. The ‘scientific system’ in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_transliteration_of_Cyrillic was used, except in the following cases:

• For Ukrainian, ji was used (not ï).

• For Ukrainian and Belarusian, the advice was not to transcribe Ukrainian and Belarusian apostrophe and, instead, write two marks ´´ (as for the Russian hard sign).

• For Belarusian Ў we used ŭ.

• For OCS and common Slavic vowels, ь and ъ were written (rather than ĭ and ŭ).

• For OCS, št was used both for шт and for щ.

• For Ц, c was always used.

• For X, x was written (except: Serbian and Macedonian, where h was used).

The authors were discouraged from using: ISO 9, the official Ukrainian romanization, the Bulgarian ‘Streamlined System’, the Library of Congress system. The authors were encouraged to use the Leipzig glossing rules and recommended abbreviations (www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/pdf/Glossing-Rules.pdf).

In addition, the following abbreviations for language names were recommended.

BCMS

Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian

BCS

Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian

Bel.

Belarusian

Bos.

Bosnian

BSL

Balto-Slavic

Bul.

Bulgarian

Cro.

Croatian

Cze.

Czech

Ksb.

Kashubian

LSo.

Lower Sorbian

Mac.

Macedonian

Mon.

Montenegrin

OCS

Old Church Slavonic

PIE

Proto-Indo-European

Pol.

Polish

PSL

Proto-Slavic

Rus.

Russian

Scr.

Serbo-Croatian

Ser.

Serbian

Slk.

Slovak

Sln.

Slovene

Sor.

Sorbian

Ukr.

Ukrainian

USo.

Upper Sorbian

This volume is equipped with a subject and person index. Since the following three languages, Russian, Polish, and Serbo-Croatian (Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian), appear very frequently in each chapter, they have not been included in the index.

The idea for this volume came from Helen Barton of Cambridge University Press. We are most grateful to her for the idea and for entrusting its execution to us. Throughout the project we have enjoyed the support of student associates. McKenna Kellar, an undergraduate student of Slavic studies at that time, helped us with targeting potential authors and corresponding with those who came aboard. Mary Murphy, also an advanced undergraduate student, then worked corresponding with the authors, finding reviewers, corresponding with them, sending editor and reviewer feedback to the authors, and collecting revisions, securing final versions of each chapter all the way to pre-production activities. Gina Scarpete Walters, a graduate student of linguistics, has created topic and person indexes, as well as worked on and coordinated pre-production activities.

We are grateful for financial support to Arizona State University (Melikian Center and School of International Letters and Cultures) and to Cornell University. We are also grateful to Cambridge University Press for a financial advance that helped us in the execution of the project.

Various colleagues from around the globe have selflessly contributed their time and expertise to provide reviews of the chapters in each volume. We are indebted to them for their feedback, which has significantly improved the volume. They are as follows: Maria Alley, Tanja Anstatt, Jakub Banasiak, Sandra Birzer, Petr Biskup, Krzysztof Borowski, Bożena Cetnarowska, Bernard Comrie, Greville Corbett, Florian Coulmas, Bartłomiej Czaplicki, Jürgen Fuchsbauer, Ljudmila Geist, Frank Gladney, Yaroslav Gorbachov, Nikolay Hakimov, Axel Holvoet, Alina Israeli, Tanya Ivanova-Sullivan, Nenad Ivanović, Hakyung Jung, Tomasz Kamusella, Mate Kapović, Alexei Kochetov, John Leafgren, Kristian Lewis, Nerea Madariaga, Anna Malicka-Klerparska, Stela Manova, Marjan Markovikj, Franc Lanko Marušič, Jasmina Milićević, Petra Mišmaš, Olga Mladenova, Tore Nesset, Đorđe Otašević, Hagen Pitsch, Ljudmila Popović, Ian Press, Ljiljana Progovac, Roman Roszko, Irena Sawicka, Joseph Schallert, Irina Sekerina, Serge Sharoff, Marko Simonović, Piotr Sobotka, Dieter Stern, Radek Šimík, Elena Titov, Mladen Uhlik, Rosti Vana, Jana Willer-Gold, Rok Žaucer, and Anton Zimmerling.