On the Earliest Slavic Borrowings in East Baltic

Abstract

A survey of the phonological and accentological evidence confirms that in general the early Latvian borrowings from East Slavic belong to an older layer than the early borrowings found in Lithuanian. The differences between the Latvian and the Lithuanian sound substitutions may to a certain extent mirror variation within the East Slavic donor language. It is likely that the oldest layer must be dated before the rise of the East Baltic tonal systems.