The Development, Preservation and Loss of Differential Case Marking in Inner Asia Minor Greek

Abstract

In Cappadocian and Pharasiot, the two main members of the inner Asia Minor Greek dialect group, the head nouns of NPs found in certain syntactic positions are marked with the accusative if the relevant NPs are definite and with the nominative if the NPs are indefinite. This differential case marking (dcm) pattern contrasts with all other Modern Greek dialects, in which the accusative is uniformly used in the relevant syntactic positions. After revisiting recent proposals regarding the synchronic status of dcm in Cappadocian and Pharasiot, I show how the two dialects developed this ‘un-Greek’ feature in the model of Turkish, which marks the head nouns of direct object NPs with an accusative suffix only if they take a specific reading leaving non-specific direct object NPs unmarked. I subsequently trace the diachronic trajectory of this contact-induced innovation within the two dialectal systems, seeking to explain why dcm was gradually lost in Cappadocian but preserved in Pharasiot.

Toad zoonyms mirror the linguistic and demographic history of Greece

“…The presence of the term φουρνόν (furnón) in Pontus (Fig 5) (an Ionian colony in antiquity) is explained as a possible survival from the Hellenistic period, through successive phases of koineisation and the reinforcement of a Medieval Greek koine in the peninsula, prior to the 11 th century Turkoman settlements and the gradual linguistic Turkification of the region [51,[92][93][94]. Although the toad zoonyms used in other Greek-speaking linguistic islands of Asia Minor and beyond (dialects of Inepolis of Paphlagonia, Ano Amisos and Oenoe; also Crimaean, Cappadocian, Silliot and Pharasiot) are unknown, it can be assumed that the term φουρνόν survived in Pontus due to the geographical and cultural isolation of its inhabitants from the rest of the Greek-speaking population after the abovementioned Turkoman settlements, which contributed to the preservation of the Greek dialects of the The spread of each zoonym was designed according to data from its current distribution, as well as contemporary historical sources.…”