SOME ASPECTS OF THE EVOLUTION OF THE NOVGOROD DIALECT FROM THE LATE 16<sup>th</sup> TO THE MIDDLE 20<sup>th</sup> CENTURY
The article describes some of the features of the Novgorod dialect that have changed or lost from the end of the 16<sup>th</sup> century to the middle of the 20<sup>th</sup> century. The study is based on handwritten document of the late 16<sup>th</sup> century Book of Old and New Servage in Novgorod presented to Clerc Dmitry Alyabyev in 1597-1598 . (RGADA, fond 1144, register 1, N<sup>o</sup> 1 and 4) with the use of materials from manuscripts of the first half of the 17<sup>th</sup> century, the dialectological atlas of the Russian language and descriptions of Russian dialects of the late 19<sup>th</sup> - early 20<sup>th</sup> centuries.1. Until the second half of the 17<sup>th</sup> century the sound [i] was a reflex of Old Russian * ě in stressed syllables. Beginning from the middle of the 19<sup>th</sup> century this particularity began to be lost, so by the middle of the 20<sup>th</sup> century in Novgorod dialects in accordance with the etymologic *ě sounds mainly [e]. 2. The change in the vocalism of the second pre-stressed and post-stressed syllables began in the first half of the 17<sup>th</sup> century, but in the second and subsequent pre-stressed syllables the process was slow, and in the post-stressed syllables it was more active. 3. At the end of the 16<sup>th</sup> century the phoneme /v/ was represented in weak positions in two ways - both with the sounds [w] and [f]. In the first half of the 17<sup>th</sup> century only [f] remains. 4. From Novgorod dialects gradually disappeared the preposition «uv». 5. At the end of the XVI<sup>th</sup> century two types of case syncretism in the singular * ā -declension coexisted: Gen.-Dat.-Loc. with the ending - ѣ (yat’) and Gen.-Dat.-Loc. with the ending -y/-i . In modern Novgorod dialects there is a second type, which became the only one by the beginning of the 18<sup>th</sup> century.