The Linguistic Profile of Romeyka

About The Language

Romeyka presents the linguist with several interesting properties that are not found in other varieties of Greek. Though it is true that Turkish has influenced Romeyka, for instance in the word order, strikingly, some properties cannot be explained by language contact. As such, they must be treated as either internally motivated changes or as retentions from an earlier stage of the Greek language, which may, however, be subject to further internal change.

A selection of these interesting properties in the Romeyka of Of (Çaykara) include the following: infinitives, negators, double-object constructions, and multiple wh-fronting. The list is by no means exhaustive, but rather reflects the progress of the project in understanding the various aspects of the Romeyka grammar.

Infinitive

One of the sharpest changes in the evolution of Greek is the loss of the infinitive (Joseph 1978), and its subsequent replacement by na-clauses.

The change is illustrated in (1) and (2):

1. ἡ γυνὴ πάλιν φρούδη, πρὶν εἰπεῖν ἐσθλὸν ἢ κακὸν λόγον. (Ancient Greek)
he: gune: palin phroude: prin eipein esthlon e: kakon logon
the woman.NOM again gone before say.PFV.INF good or bad word.ACC
“The woman left, before saying either a good or a bad word.” (Sophocles, Antigone, 1245)

2. Ι jineka efije prin na pi ute kalo ute kako loγo. (Modern Greek)
the woman.NOM left.3SG before PRT.SUBJ say.PFV.3SG neither good nor bad word.ACC
“The woman left before saying either a good or a bad word.”

Infinitival complements were gradually replaced by hina-clauses which later became na-clauses. Infinitival loss has its origins in Hellenistic Greek (New Testament Greek, in particular), as the competing structures in (3) show:

3a. οὐ θέλω δὲ ὑμᾶς ἀγνοεῖν ἀδελφοί, ὅτι πολλάκις προεθέμην ἐλθεῖν
ou thelo: de huma:s agnoein adelfoi, hoti pollakis (Hellenistic Greek)
not want.1SG but you be.ignorant.IMPF.INF brothers.VOC that often
proetheme:n elthein
planned.1SG come.PFV.INF
“But I don’t want you to be unaware, brothers, that many times I planned to come.”
(Rom. 1:13)
b. καὶ οὐκ ἤθελεν ἵνα τις γνῷ
kai ouk e:thelen hina tis gno:i
and not wanted.3SG PRT anyone know.PFV.SUBJ.3SG
“And he didn’t want anyone to know.”
(Mk. 9:30 apud Beck 2011: 3)

Against this background of the almost total eclipse of the infinitive from the Greek language, consider infinitival retention in Romeyka (4) and the similarity to (1):

4. Prin pisini fain, prin spudžisini so mandrin tši pao. (Romeyka)
before make.INF food before clean.INF at.the barn not go.1SG
“Before I cook and before I’ve cleaned the barn, I am not going.”
Interestingly, Pontic Greek today (5) does not allow for an infinitive and, therefore, aligns with Modern Greek (2):

5. prin na mairevo so mandrin ki pao. (Pontic Greek)
before PRT.SUBJ cook.1SG to.the barn not go.1SG
“Before I cook I am not going to the barn.”

Although infinitives survive into Medieval Greek, infinitive in before-clauses are only found as learned borrowings and are register-specific:

6. καὶ πρὶν ἐλθεῖν τὸν στρατηγὸν οὐδὲ εἷς ὑπελείφθη. (Medieval Greek)
ke prin elθin ton stratiγon uðe is ipelifθi
and before come.PFV.INF the general.ACC not one was-left
“And before the general came, no one was left.”
Digenes (Grottaferata, IV 646)

However, although in continuous use since Hellenistic times, the Romeyka infinitive has undergone two significant changes:

a. the syntactic distribution of the infinitive as a complement in Romeyka shows restriction to the most monoclausal domain, namely as a complement to nonveridical verbs, the prototypical licensing context for the infinitive. This is also typical of the infinitive’s distribution in Medieval Greek.
b. The infinitive was reanalysed as a negative polarity item; that is, it came to operate under a rather constrained use, which appears to be tied to the degrees to which a proposition assumes, or rather does not assume, its own truth value. This is a development unique to Romeyka.

References in which this material appears:

Sitaridou, I. (2014). ‘Modality, antiveridicality, and complementation: The Romeyka infinitive as a negative polarity item’. Lingua 148. pp. 118-146.
Sitaridou, I. (2014). ‘The Romeyka Infinitive: Continuity, Contact and Change in the Hellenic varieties of Pontus’. Diachronica 31.1. pp. 23-73.

Negation

Romeyka differs from Modern Greek (and other Pontic Greek varieties to a lesser degree) with respect to negation in many ways:

 

  1. Retention of Classical Greek negator ou:
  2. Retention of Classical Greek me in negated conditionals
  3. Retention of Medieval Greek negator miðen
  1. Retention of Classical Greek negator ou:
    Classical Greek negator ou underwent a Jespersen’s Cycle-type development to surface as modern dhen. Romeyka, however, did not undergo this process, and preserves: (i) a form that is a direct retention of Classical ou(k), namely (u)tš(i) (with palatatalisation); (ii) the same type of allomorphy as that found in Classical Greek.
     
  2. Retention of Classical Greek me in negated conditionals
    Modern Greek negates conditionals with dhen. On the contrary, Classical Greek made use of the negator me, which is, crucially, preserved in Romeyka in negated counterfactual conditionals and exclamatives.
     
  3. Retention of Medieval Greek negator miðen
    In Medieval Greek, there was a secondary form, mi
    ðen, was in competition with me which was the par-excellence sentential negator of non-veridical propositions; the latter won out and Modern Greek retains midhen as meaning ‘zero’ only, whereas Romeyka has retained the form as a negator proper namely miðen

References in which this material appears:

Chatzopoulou, K. & I. Sitaridou (to appear). ‘Negator selection in Romeyka conditionals: Jespersen’s cycle for NEG2 and Conditional Inversion’. In Kiss, Katalin, et al (Eds.), Fuctional heads across time: syntactic reanalysis and change. Oxford: OUP.
Sitaridou, I. (to appear). Romeyka negators: ‘Nothing makes sense except in the light of diachrony’. Ms., University of Cambridge.
Sitaridou, I. (2016). ‘Reframing the phylogeny of Asia Minor Greek: The view from Pontic Greek’. CHS Research Bulletin, Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University, Volume 4, Issue 1. pp. 1-17
Sitaridou, I. (2014). ‘Modality, antiveridicality, and complementation in Pontic Greek: The Romeyka infinitive as a negative polarity item’. Lingua 148. pp. 118-146.
Gibbins, A. (2013). Modality and negation in the history of Greek: Evidence from Romeyka. Undergraduate Linguistics Dissertation, University of Cambridge.

Double Object Constructions

In Romeyka indirect object (IO) determiner phrases (DPs) are: (i) accusative like the direct object (DO) DPs ones (1a), whereas in Standard Modern Greek they are genitive (1d); and (ii) do not alternate with prepositional phrases (1b), unlike Pontic Greek (1c) and Modern Greek (1d):

  1. a. To γarðelin eðotšen fani don aðelfo.  (ROf)
         the child gave.3SG food the brother.ACC
         “The child gave food to the brother.”
    b. To γarðelin eðotšen fain son aðelfon. 
    (ROf)
         the child gave.3SG food to-the brother.ACC
         “The child gave food to the brother.”
    c. To peði eðose fai son aðelfo. 
    (Pontic Greek)
         the child gave.3SG food to-the brother.ACC
         “The child gave food to the brother.”
    d. To peði eðose fai ston aðelfo / tu aðelfu fai.  (SMG)
         the child gave.3SG food to-the brother / the brother.GEN food

In Romeyka, both surface orders (IO-DO and DO-IO) are licit, despite the morphological homonymy, although the most common order in our data was DO-V-IO:

  1. a. To peði eðotše fai ton aðelfo/ton aðelfo fai.  (RSür)
         the kid gave.3SG food.ACC the brother.ACC/the brother.ACC food.ACC
         “The kid gave food to the brother.”
    b. Eγo eðoka ton Mehmeti ena kitap/ena kitap ton Mehmeti.  (ROf)
         I gave.1SG the Mehmet.ACC a book.ACC/a book.ACC the Mehmet.ACC
         “I gave Mehmet a book.”

Crucially, Barss & Lasnik’s (1986) diagnostics for c-command indicate that DPDO asymmetrically c-commands DPIO:

  1. Weak Crossover Effects (Romeyka):
  1. a. Pion zon ekloses ton tšopanonat?  (RSür)
        which animal sent.2SG the shepherd-its
       “Which animal did you send to its shepherd?”
    b. *Tinan tšopan(i) ekloses to zonat? 
    (RSür)
           which shepherd sent.2SG the animal-his
          “Which shepherd did you send his animal to?”
  1. Superiority effects (Romeyka):
  1. a. Doγna tinan eðikses?  (ROf) 
         what whom showed.2SG
    a’. *Tinan doγna eðikses?  (ROf)
          whom what showed.2SG
         “What did you show to whom?”
    b. Pion fa(j)in tinan eðotšen?  (ROf)
         which food whom gave.3SG
        “Which food did she give to whom?”
  1. Quantifier variable binding (Romeyka):
  1. Ta γarðelæi xoræ xoræi eðiksa tši maγlimis’atuni  (ROf)
    the children.ACC each each showed.1SG the teachers.ACC-their
    “I showed all the children, one by one, to their teachers (each child to her
    own teacher).”
    *“I showed every child his/her teacher.”

These data are rather important because it seems that the underlying order in double order constructions is DO>>IO which then makes German not the only language having this underlying order (see Müller 1995, McGinnis 1999). In fact, the situation seems to be the same in some diachronic varieties of Greek as well, notably Medieval Cypriot Greek (as well as Hellenistic Greek; see Michelioudakis 2010b, 2011). This constitutes a serious challenge for the validity of any cross-linguistic generalization whereby IO DPs always merge higher than DOs.

 

References in which this material appears:

Michelioudakis, D. & I. Sitaridou. (2012). ‘Syntactic microvariation: Dative Constructions in Greek’. In R. Etxepare & B. Fernández (eds.), Datives in variation: a micro-comparative perspective. Oxford: OUP. pp. 212-255.

Multiple wh-Fronting

It is well known that Standard Modern Greek does not allow multiple wh-fronting. However, Romeyka seems to exhibit Superiority effects, which show that multiple wh-fronting is strictly order-preserving, as in Bulgarian, albeit not otherwise identical.

See examples below:

It is well known that Standard Modern Greek does not allow multiple wh-fronting, as shown in (1b):

  1. a. Pjos eðose ti se pjon?  (SMG)
    who gave.3SG what to whom
    “Who gave what to whom?”
    b. *Pjos ti (se pjon) eðose?  (SMG)
    who what to whom gave.3SG

Interestingly, however, Romeyka, and Pontic Greek in general allow multiple wh-fronting:

  1. a. O Mehmetis tinan doγna eðotše?  (ROf)
    the.NOM Mehmet.NOM whom what gave.3SG
    “Mehmet gave what/which one to whom?

    b. 
    “Tinan pion ospit eðiksises?  (Pontic Greek)
    whom which house showed.2SG
    “Which house did you show to whom?”

    c. 
    *Pion ospit eðiksises tinan?  (Pontic Greek)
    which house showed.2SG whom

Crucially, Romeyka seems to exhibit Superiority effects (3a–b), which show that multiple wh-fronting is strictly order-preserving, as in Bulgarian (3c–d), albeit not otherwise identical (see Bošković 1997, Michelioudakis & Sitaridou 2012):

  1. a. Pios tinan aγapai?  (ROf)
    who whom love.3SG
    “Who loves whom?”
    b. *Tinan pios aγapai?  (ROf)
    whom who love.3SG
    c. Koj kogo obia?  (Bulgarian)
    who whom love.3SG
    “Who loves whom?”
    d. *Kogo koj obia?  (Bulgarian)
    whom who love.3SG

 

References in which this material appears:

Michelioudakis, D. & I. Sitaridou. (to appear). ‘Recasting the multiple-wh typology: Evidence from Pontic Greek varieties’. Glossa.
Michelioudakis, D. & I. Sitaridou. (2013). ‘Multiple wh-fronting in Romeyka’. In A. Ralli, B. Joseph & M. Janse (eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference of Modern Greek Dialects and Linguistic Theory (MGDLT5), Ghent, 20-22 September 2012. pp. 353-378.
Michelioudakis, D. & I. Sitaridou. (2012). ‘Syntactic microvariation: Dative Constructions in Greek’. InR. Etxepare & B. Fernández (eds.), Datives in variation: a micro-comparative perspective. Oxford: OUP. pp. 212-255.

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