LINGUIST List 22.3857
Tue Oct 04 2011
Diss: Historical Ling/Morphology/Greek: Karatsareas: 'A Study of ...'
Editor for this issue: Xiyan Wang
<xiyanlinguistlist.org>
1. Petros Karatsareas ,
A Study of Cappadocian Greek Nominal Morphology from a Diachronic and Dialectological Perspective
Message 1: A Study of Cappadocian Greek Nominal Morphology from a Diachronic and Dialectological Perspective
Date: 28-Sep-2011
From: Petros Karatsareas <pk299cam.ac.uk>
Subject: A Study of Cappadocian Greek Nominal Morphology from a Diachronic and Dialectological Perspective
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Institution: University of Cambridge
Program: PhD in Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2011
Author: Petros Karatsareas
Dissertation Title: A Study of Cappadocian Greek Nominal Morphology from a Diachronic and Dialectological Perspective
Dissertation URL: http://cambridge.academia.edu/karatsareas/Papers
Linguistic Field(s):
Historical Linguistics
Morphology
Subject Language(s): Greek, Cappadocian (cpg)
Language Family(ies): Indo-European
Dissertation Director:
Bert Vaux
Dissertation Abstract:
In this dissertation, I investigate a number of interrelated developments affectingthe morphosyntax of nouns in Cappadocian Greek. I specifically focus on thedevelopment of differential object marking, the loss of grammatical genderdistinctions, and the neuterisation of noun inflection. My aim is to provide adiachronic account of the innovations that Cappadocian has undergone in thethree domains mentioned above. Αll the innovations examined in this study havethe effect of rendering the morphology and syntax of nouns in Cappadocian morelike that of neuters. On account of the historical and sociolinguisticcircumstances in which Cappadocian developed as well as of the superficialsimilarity of their outcomes to equivalent structures in Turkish, previous researchhas overwhelmingly treated the Cappadocian developments as instances ofcontact-induced change that resulted from the influence of Turkish. In this study,I examine the Cappadocian innovations from a language-internal point of viewand in comparison with parallel developments attested in the other ModernGreek dialects of Asia Minor, namely Pontic, Rumeic, Pharasiot and Silliot. Mycomparative analysis of a wide range of dialect-internal, cross-dialectal andcross-linguistic typological evidence shows that language contact with Turkishcan be identified as the main cause of change only in the case of differentialobject marking. On the other hand, with respect to the origins of the mostpervasive innovations in gender and noun inflection, I argue that they go back tothe common linguistic ancestor of the modern Asia Minor Greek dialects and donot owe their development to language contact with Turkish. I show in detail thatthe superficial similarity of these latter innovations' outcomes to their Turkishequivalents in each case represents the final stage in a long series oftypologically plausible, language-internal developments whose earlymanifestations predate the intensification of Cappadocian-Turkish linguistic andcultural exchange. These findings show that diachronic change in Cappadocianis best understood when examined within a larger Asia Minor Greek context. Onthe whole, they make a significant contribution to our knowledge of the history ofCappadocian and the Asia Minor Greek dialects as well as to Modern Greekdialectology more generally, and open a fresh round of discussion on the originand development of other innovations attested in these dialects that areconsidered by historical linguists and Modern Greek dialectologists to beuntypically Greek or contact-induced or both.
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