Common Slavic

Pitch accent

Common Slavic vowels also had a pitch accent. In Middle Common Slavic, all accented long vowels, nasal vowels and liquid diphthongs had a distinction between two pitch accents, traditionally called "acute" and "circumflex" accent. The acute accent was pronounced with rising intonation, while the circumflex accent had a falling intonation. Short vowels (*e *o *ь *ъ) had no pitch distinction, and were always pronounced with falling intonation. Unaccented (unstressed) vowels never had tonal distinctions, but could still have length distinctions. These rules are similar to the restrictions that apply to the pitch accent in Slovene.