The lengthening of vowels in the stokavian dialects of Serbo-Croatian

This dissertation offers a typological description and historical interpretation of the lengthening of vowels in literary Serbo-Croatian and the stokavian dialects. The stokavian dialects are the largest and most thoroughly described of the Serbo-Croatian dialect families, and they present a wide range of quantitative phenomena; a typological study will clarify the progression and limits of the lengthenings and contribute to an understanding of similar developments in other Slavic languages.;The first section of the dissertation provides a brief overview of the quantitative pattern inherited by SCr from CSl. The next two chapters examine each of the major phonological and analogical sources of new long vowels and their contemporary distribution in the literary language and the stokavian dialects, and the fourth chapter addresses several less significant lengthenings. The final chapter contains a summary of the results of the study and a comparison with the other Serbo-Croatian dialects and Slavic languages; this analysis serves as the basis for the historical interpretation of the described phenomena.