Multiple wh-fronting across Pontic Greek Dialects

Ioanna Sitaridou
Dimitris Michelioudakis

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics
1(1), pp. 1 – 40, 2016.

In this paper we revisit and revise the typology of multiple questions and multiple wh-fronting (MWF) in the light of data from Romeyka, a Greek variety spoken in Pontus, Turkey, and from another Pontic Greek variety spoken in northern Greece. Both varieties provide evidence for wh-fronting as focus movement, their most striking feature being the availability of single-pair interpretations in spite of strict Superiority. It turns out that the parametric system deriving the space of variation in multiple wh-fronting must be extended to accommodate the facts presented here, which seem to instantiate a further type of MWF (with a corresponding type of non-MWF languages), not predicted by the existing typology. At the same time, put in a cross-linguistic perspective, the Romeyka facts may help us uncover independent restrictions on the possibilities that this parametric system makes available. We propose that the availability of peripheral positions and their activation in the left or low periphery may be a point of parametric variation. Furthermore, still complying with Bošković’s (2007) theory of Attract-1/all, certain Focus heads can be Attract-1, thus deriving the compatibility of Superiority with single pair readings. Finally, we present some speculations about a potential correlation between word order/head directionality in the clausal domain and the kind of information structure-related head (e.g. Topic vs. Focus) that can take on an Attract-1 feature.

Reframing the phylogeny of Asia Minor Greek: The view from Pontic Greek

Ioanna Sitaridou

CHS Research Bulletin
4(1), 2015.

In this article we discuss some of the crucial issues pertaining to the evolution and classification of Pontic Greek. In particular, we examine the extent to which Pontic Greek participated in the koineization process. In light of the Romeyka data (still spoken in North-East Turkey in the area traditionally known as Pontus), we present our cue-based (in the sense of Lightfoot 2002) reconstruction method (see also Willis 2011), which, according to Sitaridou’s (2014a/b) study of the Romeyka infinitive, has, so far, yielded a phylogeny advocating the Hellenistic Greek roots of Pontic Greek with ‘leap-frog’ contact with other Greek varieties during the medieval period. We test this further by presenting evidence from the negation system, which seems to confirm this thesis. Finally, we compare these findings with the ones stemming from a recent computational phylogenetic study based on microparameters (Guardiano et al. in press), and the results are shown to be compatible.

Contrastivity in Pontic Greek

Ioanna Sitaridou
Maria Kaltsa

Lingua 146 (1), pp. 1-27, 2014

Efforts to impose linguistic uniformity have resulted in significant loss of dialectal variation in Greece thus rendering Greek dialectal syntax difficult to study. The present article aims to shed light on an understudied area of Greek dialectal syntax, namely the organization of information structure in Pontic Greek. Through empirical work, it is argued that [contrast] is an autonomous structural notion (in line with 0495 and 0265) in Pontic Greek rather than a sub-feature of Focus, as traditionally held for Standard Modern Greek. In particular, is claimed that Pontic Greek (i) employs a rich particle system to express contrast; (b) CLLD does not have the same pragmatic import as in Standard Modern Greek, and; (c) “pa”-phrases are almost exclusively associated with a non-exhaustive reading, whereas focus movement is always associated with an exhaustive one; (d) information focus is obligatorily in the left periphery. On the basis of our findings we argue that there is evidence in favour of a Contrast projection in the CP domain.

Topicalization in Pontic Greek

Maria Kaltsa and Ioanna Sitaridou

Pontic Greek is a variety of Greek which was historically spoken outside the area which now constitutes the Greek state. Today, as a consequence of the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), it is spoken both within and outside Greece. Within Greece it is mainly spoken in Macedonia, Thrace, and to a lesser extent in Attica. Outside Greece it is spoken in the Pontus region –the historical berceau of all Pontic varieties– but also in Istanbul, in Caucasus and by diaspora communities across the world. Although Pontic in Greece seems to be robust in terms of number of speakers, in real terms the majority of speakers is severely attrited. Indicative of the attrition situation is that although the number of Pontians is quite significant (above 2 million in Greece alone) only a fraction of the population (200,000 or 300,000 depending on the estimates) is reported to be active speakers of the dialect. Due to the geographical dispersion of Pontic, it is important to note that the term Pontic, synchronically, can only be used as an “umbrella” term for the various subdialects, which, crucially, can diverge significantly from each other (e.g., “Christian” vs. “Muslim” Pontic, cf. Mackridge 1987). For the purpose of this paper we use the term “Pontic” to refer to the Pontic varieties of Northern Greece. Greek dialectal syntax is notoriously understudied primarily because of all the efforts –perpetuating at both social and institutional level– to erase dialectal variation and instead, impose linguistic uniformity in the name of Standard Modern Greek (henceforth SMG) (for the same view see also Ralli 2007). Within this context, work on dialectal syntax is urgently needed and our present article aims at contributing towards this direction. The goal of the article is twofold: first, to describe the discourse phenomenon of topicalisation in Pontic syntactically; and, second, to suggest a (cartographic) analysis casted within the generative framework thus making the present work the first attempt of this kind. The paper is organised as follows: Section 2 presents the main syntactic features of Pontic that differentiate it from the standard variety. Section 3 describes our methodology. Section 4 discusses topicalisation strategies in Pontic. Section 5 proposes a syntactic analysis of topicalisation in Pontic. Finally, section 6 concludes the discussion.

Syntactic microvariation in Pontic Greek: Dative constructions

Dimitris Michelioudakis
Ioanna Sitaridou

Oxford University Press, 2012

In this article, we discuss differences across Basque dialects in the accessibility of datives to absolutive-type agreement. In most varieties, including Standard Basque, datives control a dedicated series of dative suffixes. In some varieties, however, their agreement “displaces” to take over agreement otherwise reserved for the absolutive. To this phenomenon we refer as dative displacement. It is a rich domain to explore the properties and parameters of dialectal variation: the basic morphology of more than fifty dative displacement varieties has been documented, and four have been examined in more detail for this work. Recent research on comparable agreement displacements reveals that sometimes they affect not only morphology, but also syntax. This appears to be true of Basque dative displacement as well, although much remains to be understood. We first describe the phenomenon and its parametrization across Basque dialects in section 2, then outline syntactic and morphological approaches to it and their different predictions in section 3, to conclude with hints of its syntactic character in section 4. Dative displacement lies at the crossroads of two ways to treat an argument added to plain transitive and unaccusative structures. The argument structure of plain transitives consists of the external argument EA and the internal argument O, SheEA boils waterO, and that of plain unaccusatives of the internal argument S, WaterS boils. To these may be added an argument that we will refer to as the indirect object IO, across a variety of structures and interpretations such as send, bake, refuse, grudge someoneIO a cake.

Recasting the typology of multiple wh-fronting: Evidence from Pontic Greek

Dimitris Michelioudakis
Ioanna Sitaridou

Glossa: a journal of general linguistics
1(1): 40. 1–33

In this paper we revisit and revise the typology of multiple questions and multiple wh-fronting (MWF) in the light of data from Romeyka, a Greek variety spoken in Pontus, Turkey, and from another Pontic Greek variety spoken in northern Greece. Both varieties provide evidence for wh-fronting as focus movement, their most striking feature being the availability of single-pair interpretations in spite of strict Superiority. It turns out that the parametric system deriving the space of variation in multiple wh-fronting must be extended to accommodate the facts presented here, which seem to instantiate a further type of MWF (with a corresponding type of non-MWF languages), not predicted by the existing typology. At the same time, put in a crosslinguistic perspective, the Romeyka facts may help us uncover independent restrictions on the possibilities that this parametric system makes available. We propose that the availability of peripheral positions and their activation in the left or low periphery may be a point of parametric variation. Furthermore, still complying with Bošković’s (2007) theory of Attract-1/all, certain Focus heads can be Attract-1, thus deriving the compatibility of Superiority with single pair readings. Finally, we present some speculations about a potential correlation between word order/head directionality in the clausal domain and the kind of information structure-related head (e.g. Topic vs. Focus) that can take on an Attract-1 feature.