P Karatsareas

A study of Cappadocian Greek nominal morphology from a diachronic and dialectological perspective

In this dissertation, I investigate a number of interrelated developments affecting the morphosyntax of nouns in Cappadocian Greek. I specifically focus on the development of differential object marking, the loss of grammatical gender distinctions, and the neuterisation of noun inflection. My aim is to provide a diachronic account of the innovations that Cappadocian has undergone in the three domains mentioned above. Αll the innovations examined in this study have the effect of rendering the morphology and syntax of nouns in Cappadocian more like that of neuters. On account of the historical and sociolinguistic circumstances in which Cappadocian developed as well as of the superficial similarity of their outcomes to equivalent structures in Turkish, previous research has overwhelmingly treated the Cappadocian developments as instances of contact-induced change that resulted from the influence of Turkish. In this study, I examine the Cappadocian innovations from a language-internal point of view and in comparison with parallel developments attested in the other Modern Greek dialects of Asia Minor, namely Pontic, Rumeic, Pharasiot and Silliot. My comparative analysis of a wide range of dialect-internal, cross-dialectal and cross-linguistic typological evidence shows that language contact with Turkish can be identified as the main cause of change only in the case of differential object marking. On the other hand, with respect to the origins of the most pervasive innovations in gender and noun inflection, I argue that they go back to the common linguistic ancestor of the modern Asia Minor Greek dialects and do not owe their development to language contact with Turkish. I show in detail that the superficial similarity of these latter innovations’ outcomes to their Turkish equivalents in each case represents the final stage in a long series of typologically plausible, language-internal developments whose early manifestations predate the intensification of Cappadocian–Turkish linguistic and cultural exchange. These findings show that diachronic change in Cappadocian is best understood when examined within a larger Asia Minor Greek context. On the whole, they make a significant contribution to our knowledge of the history of Cappadocian and the Asia Minor Greek dialects as well as to Modern Greek dialectology more generally, and open a fresh round of discussion on the origin and development of other innovations attested in these dialects that are considered by historical linguists and Modern Greek dialectologists to be untypically Greek or contact-induced or both.

The Asia Minor Greek adpositional cycle: a tale of multiple causation

This paper examines the interplay of language-internal continuity and external influence in the cyclical development of the Asia Minor Greek adpositional system. The Modern Greek dialects of Asia Minor inherited an adpositional system of the Late Medieval Greek type whereby secondary adpositions regularly combined with primary adpositions to encode spatial region. Secondary adpositions could originally precede simple adpositions ([PREPOSITION + PREPOSITION + NPACC]) or follow the adpositional complement ([PREPOSITION + NPACC + POSTPOSITION]). Asia Minor Greek replicated the structure of Ottoman Turkish postpositional phrases to resolve this variability, fixing the position of secondary adpositions after the complement and thus developing circumpositions of the type [PREPOSITION + NPACC + POSTPOSITION]. Later, some varieties dropped the primary preposition SE from circumpositional phrases, leaving (secondary) postpositions as the only overt relator ([NPACC + POSTPOSITION]) in some environments. In addition, a number of Turkish postpositions were borrowed wholesale, thus enriching the Greek adpositional inventory.

From syntagmatic to paradigmatic spatial zeroes: the loss of the preposition se in inner Asia Minor Greek

Abstract We trace the diachronic development of the preposition se in inner Asia Minor Greek from its use to mark a range of spatial functions to its ultimate loss and replacement by zero. We propose that, before spreading to all syntactic and semantic contexts, zero-marking was contextually-dependent on the presence/absence of a prenominal genitive modifying the head noun of Ground-encoding NPs and on the presence/absence of Region-encoding postpositions. We attribute these developments to an informational load relief strategy aimed at producing more economical utterances, as well as to language contact with Turkish, which favored structural convergence on the adpositional level between the two languages.

Attitudes towards Cypriot Greek and Standard Modern Greek in London's Greek Cypriot community

Aim: To investigate whether the positive attitudes towards Standard Modern Greek and the mixture of positive and negative attitudes towards Cypriot Greek that have been documented in Cyprus are also present in London’s Greek Cypriot community. Approach: Unlike previous quantitative works, the study reported in this article was qualitative and aimed at capturing the ways in which attitudes and attitude-driven practices are experienced by members of London’s diasporic community. Data and analysis: Data were collected by means of semi-structured, sociolinguistic interviews with 28 members of the community. All participants were second-generation heritage speakers, successive bilinguals in Cypriot Greek and English and successive bidialectal speakers in Cypriot Greek and Standard Modern Greek. The data were analysed qualitatively (thematic analysis). Findings: Positive perceptions of Standard Modern Greek and mixed perceptions, both positive and negative, of Cypriot Greek are found in the context of London. As in Cyprus, Standard Modern Greek is perceived as a prestigious, proper and ‘correct’ variety of Greek. Cypriot Greek, in contrast, is described as a ‘villagey’, heavy and even broken variety. Greek complementary schools play a key role in engendering these attitudes. Unlike in Cyprus, in the London community, the use of Cypriot Greek is also discouraged in informal settings such as the home. Originality: Papapavlou and Pavlou contended that ‘there are no signs of negative attitudes towards Cypriot Greek [in the UK]’ (2001, The interplay of language use and language maintenance and the cultural identity of Greek Cypriots in the UK. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 11, 104). This research shows their claim to be false. Significance/implications: Negative attitudes towards Cypriot Greek lead to a community-wide preference for the use of Standard Modern Greek in communication with other members of the Greek Cypriot community, which poses a great threat to the intergenerational transmission and maintenance of Cypriot Greek as a heritage language in London.