vowel shortening followed by Dybo's law) produced contrastive vowel length. This vowel length survives (to varying extents) in Czech, Slovak, Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian and Old Polish, but was lost entirely early in the history of Russian, with almost no remnants. (A possible remnant is a distinction between two o-like vowels, e.g. and , in some Russian dialects, that may partly reflect earlier length distinctions.) Proto-Slavic accentual distinctions (circumflex vs. acute vs. neoacute) were also lost early in the history of Russian. It has often been hypothesized that the accentual distinctions were first converted into length distinctions, as in West Slavic, followed by the loss of distinctive vowel length. Pretty much the only reflex of the accentual type is found in the stress pattern of pleophonic sequences like CereC, CoroC, ColoC (where C = any consonant); see below. Notably, however, the position (as opposed to the type) of the accent was largely preserved in Russian as a stress-type accent (whereas the Proto-Slavic accent was a pitch accent). The complex stress patterns of Russian nouns, verbs and short adjectives are a direct inheritance from Late Common Slavic, with relatively few changes. Pleophony and CVRC sequences Pleophony or "full-voicing" (polnoglasie, ) is the addition of vowels on either side of and in Proto-Slavic sequences like CorC where C = any consonant. The specific sound changes involved are as follows: *CerC > CereC *CorC > CoroC *CelC, *ColC > ColoC *CьrC > CerC *CъrC > CorC *CьlC, *CъlC > ColC Examples: Proto-Slavic "bank (of a river), shore" > Russian (béreg); cf. Old Church Slavonic (brěgŭ) Proto-Slavic "beard" > Russian (borodá); cf. Old Church Slavonic (brada) Proto-Slavic "milk" > Russian (molokó); cf. Old Church Slavonic (mlěko) Proto-Slavic "ear (of corn), spike" > Russian (kólos); cf. Old Church Slavonic (klasŭ) Note that Church Slavonic influence has made it less common in Russian than in modern Ukrainian and Belarusian: Ukrainian: Russian: ('Vladimir') (although a familiar form of the name in Russian is still ). When a Proto-Slavic sequence like *CerC was accented, the position of the accent in the resulting pleophonic sequence depends on the type of accent (circumflex, acute or neoacute). This is one of the few places in Russian where different types of accents resulted in differing reflexes. In particular, a sequence like CéreC, with the stress on the first syllable, resulted from a Proto-Slavic circumflex accent, while a sequence like CeréC, with the stress