Editing Old Novgorod dialect (section)

==Implications of Old Novgorod findings==
According to [[Andrey Zaliznyak|Zaliznyak]], the Old Novgorod linguistic features, instead of being merely isolated deviations, represent a bundle of peculiar isoglosses. The deviations are more abundant in older birch bark letters than in the more recent finds. This fact indicates, contrary to what may be  expected, that the development was convergent rather than divergent, with regard to other northern [[East Slavic languages|East Slavic dialects]].

According to Zaliznyak, the discovery of Old Novgorod dialect suggests that earlier conceptions which held East Slavic as a relatively homogeneous linguistic grouping, have been dispelled by a view advancing it instead as an area of much greater dialectal diversity. Zaliznyak divides the East Slavic area into two dialectal groupings: Proto-Novgorodian-Pskovian on one side, singled out chiefly on the basis of two instances lacking second palatalization of velars and the ending ''-e'' in nominative singular of masculine o-stems, and all the remaining East Slavic dialects on the other.