Pontic Language Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

This new series provides a forum for exchange on a myriad of alternative histories of marginalized communities and individuals in the Near and Middle East and Mediterranean, and those of Middle Eastern or Mediterranean heritage. It will... more

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- Philology, Religion, Buddhism, Mythology And Folklore

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.

- by Petros Karatsareas
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- Historical Linguistics, Dialectology, Cappadocian Language, Pontic Language

I wrote this review last summer after a new edition of Panaretos' chronicle of Trebizond was published. It offers an overview and critical review of the Russian edition. It is intended to provide a useful guide to navigating the Russian edition for scholars who have may not have the best grasp of Russian. As it seems that editors of journals already have their preferred reviewers for the volume, I've decided to self publish it, as the internet gives me more space to write a lengthier and frankly more thoughtful review than is permissible in the average journal.

- by Tania Paciaroni
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- Language Acquisition, Syntax, Pontic Language, Scandinavian languages

This article challenges the widely held view that a series of pervasive diachronic innovations in Cappadocian Greek owe their development to language contact with Turkish. Placing particular emphasis on its genealogical relationships with the other dialects of Asia Minor, the claim is that language change in Cappadocian is best understood when considered within a larger dialectological context. Examining the limited use of the definite article as a case in point and in comparison with parallel developments attested in Pontic and Silliot Greek, it is shown in detail that the surface similarity of the outcomes of Cappadocian innovations to their Turkish structural equivalents represents the final stages in long series of language-internal developments whose origins predate the intensification of Cappadocian–Turkish contact. The article thus offers an alternative to contact-oriented approaches and calls for a revision of accepted views on the language-internal and -external dynamics that shaped Cappadocian into its modern form.

- by Petros Karatsareas
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- Dialectology, Pontic Language, Turkish Language, Language contact

Alongside the syntactic agreement system that it inherited from earlier stages in its history as a Greek dialect whereby targets agree with the morphologically- assigned gender of their controllers (masculine, feminine, neuter), Pontic has developed an innovative semantic agreement system: nouns denoting inanimate and non-human animate entities trigger agreement in the neuter. Adopting the theoretical framework of Corbett (1991; 2006) and drawing on recent cross- linguistic findings on the development of gender agreement, this paper provides (a) a synchronic description of the distribution of the two Pontic agreement systems, syntactic and semantic, and (b) a diachronic account of the historical origin and subsequent evolution of the innovative semantic agreement system. It is shown that the synchronic distribution of the two systems confirms Corbett’s generalisations: semantic agreement is found with targets typically positioned farther away from the controller while syntactic agreement holds sway with those targets that appear closest to it. It is further argued that the development of semantic agreement in the dialect followed the cross-linguistically well- observed path defined by Corbett’s Agreement Hierarchy, starting from the personal pronoun and gradually arriving at definite articles with its completion attested in Rumeic, the dialect of the area of Mariupol (Ukraine). Finally, it is proposed that this innovation, whose earliest manifestations must be dated before the early 14th century CE, paved the way for the later loss of gender agreement in Cappadocian and Pharasiot, the other two Asia Minor Greek dialects to have undergone innovations in their gender systems.

- by Petros Karatsareas
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- Typology, Gender, Cappadocian Language, Pontic Language
- by Igor Kuznetsov
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- Anthropology, Armenian Studies, Culture, Pontic Language

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 pre-sence/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.

- by Petros Karatsareas and +1
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- Diachronic Linguistics (Or Historical Linguistics), Languages and Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, Greek Language

Cappadocian is an East Asia Minor Greek variety most closely related to Pharasiot and Pontic. Having been cut off from the rest of the Greek-speaking world after the defeat of the Byzantine army by the Seljuk Turks in the battle at Manzikert (1071), Cappadocian was increasingly Turkicized, but the Greek component preserved its essentially Late Medieval reek character. Unfortunately, our evidence for the historical development of Cappadocian is very scanty, consisting as it does of a few dozen inscriptions from the famous “rock-cut” churches of Cappadocia and the Greek poems written in Arabic script by the thirteenth-century Persian poet-scholar Rūmī and his son Sultan Walad. In this chapter I analyze new and hitherto unexplored evidence for diachronic variation in Cappadocian: Medieval Akritic songs orally transmitted hrough the ages in Cappadocia. The language of these songs, composed in the traditional Byzantine decapentasyllable or political verse, is a mixture of Late Medieval / Early Modern Greek and nineteenth-century Cappadocian, linguistically reminiscent of the AncGr epic, which also combined archaic and innovative features in a set metrical framework. Apart from loanwords and grammatical patterns borrowed from Turkish, the so-called ‘Byzantine residue’ of Cappadocian offers a unique glimpse of language variation and change in Late Medieval / Early Modern Greek.

- by Mark Janse
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- Cappadocian Language, Pontic Language, Pontic Greek, Asia Minor Greek

Η συγκεκριμένη εργασία θα πραγματευτεί την παρουσία του ελληνικού στοιχείου σε μια περιοχή που καλύπτει μεγάλο μέρος της Ευρασίας. Συγκεκριμένα θα εξεταστεί η παρουσία τόσο πολιτικών προσφύγων όσο βέβαια και το Ποντιακού ελληνισμού στην... more

- by Phoebus Tsoumbos
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- Soviet History, Refugee Studies, Pontic Language, Soviet Union (History)

The linguist Michael Deffner (1848-1934), who did important field work on the modern Greek dialects of the Zakoniá and Pontos regions, also published archaeological field work he did at Leonidion, Methana, Skyros and western Crete (Chaniá... more

Many scholars believe that more than 350,000 Pontic Greeks and between 300,000-600,000 Assyrians, Syriacs and Chaldeans were exterminated by the Turkish troops and Kurdish militias during 1915-1923. Unfortunately, most historians highlight the Armenian Genocide and the remaining nations’ suffering has been almost forgotten for many reasons. Today their grandchildren are demanding justice, Greeks, Assyrians, Arameans (Syriacs) together with Armenians are lobbying, protesting and cooperating with each other to raise their unheard just voice. On the other hand, while the Greek-Assyrian-Aramean Diaspora is supporting Armenians on international courts and parliaments, the Armenian state still has not recognized the Greek-Pontic and Assyrian-Aramaean Genocides.
(Note Armenia recognized both Genocides on 24/3/2015)

- by Yeghia Tashjian
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- Greek History, Genocide Studies, Pontic Language, Turkey

La ricerca nelle fonti geostoriche dimostra pienamente quanto in epoca moderna fosse riconosciuta l’importanza delle infrastrutture che permettevano l’attraversamento del Nera a coloro che compirono ricognizioni dirette sul territorio o raccolsero informazioni per produrre carte aggiornate sull’area in esame. Benché le descrizioni e la letteratura di viaggio si siano concentrate maggiormente su alcuni ponti maestosi e di antica costruzione presenti sugli itinerari maggiori, geografi e cartografi dedicarono invece attenzione anche a strutture “minori” relativamente alle dimensioni o alla complessità architettonica. La sintesi che la cartografia storica ci consegna è una testimonianza importantissima per la ricostruzione della conoscenza e dello sfruttamento del territorio nel passato. Grazie a essa immaginiamo perfettamente non solo il difficoltoso contesto territoriale, ma anche la complessa realtà socio-economica e ambientale sviluppatasi nella valle del Nera che ancora alla fine dell’Ottocento manteneva inalterate le sue peculiari caratteristiche naturali e infrastrutturali. Si delinea un quadro chiaro e dettagliato del processo di interazione fra la natura, con i suoi rilievi e le acque, gli uomini, con la loro cultura e i saperi materiali e immateriali, e gli animali. La rete tratturale che attraversava la Valnerina non poteva prescindere dalla funzione essenziale assicurata dai diversi ponti realizzati dalla mano dell’uomo, fossero anche meno noti e rimarchevoli, ma ugualmente rilevanti localmente e non solo tanto da lasciare tracce evidenti ancora nella toponomastica attuale.
Se nelle fonti letterarie l’attenzione ricevuta nel corso del tempo da questi ponti è stata minore, la cartografia storica invece ne ha celebrato l’esistenza e talvolta anche le forme. Ci auguriamo che queste brevi note e questo excursus geocartografico possano accompagnare i viaggiatori curiosi di oggi alla riscoperta dei segni del passato e alla ricerca delle tracce visibili di quella piccola, grande storia che si è sviluppata lungo le sponde del fiume e sui suoi ponti.

- by Annalisa D'Ascenzo
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- Pontic Language, Historical Cartography, Cartografia storica, Tratturi

This article will be displayed here soon; please ask to the author for a free copy: elafli@yahoo.ca
In this brief paper in Turkish language four icons from Turkey will be presented. These icons represent Ephrem the Syrian and Saint Paraskevi of Rome, Saint Marina the Great Martyr and Vanquisher of Demons, Hodegetria and Chris of Utmost Humiliation. All four of them belong to the end of 19th cent. and they were products of local Pontic Post-Byzantine icon painters who derived their themes from Byzantine visual tradition, but was also aware of contemporary norms of western realism and painting styles. Most probably these icons originate from local Greek churches or houses in the surroundings of the southern Black Sea littoral.

- by Ergun LAFLI
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- Art History, Anatolian Studies, Pontic Language, Byzantine Studies
- by Igor Kuznetsov
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- Anthropology, Armenian Studies, Culture, Pontic Language

Οι στίχοι των τραγουδιών του παλαιού, Πόντιου, λυράρη Νίκου Παπαβραμίδη δίνουν λαογραφικά στοιχεία για την Τραπεζούντα των τελών του 19ου και των αρχών του 20ου αιώνα, πριν την ανταλλαγή πληθυσμών του 1923. Παράλληλα υμνούν τον έρωτα των... more

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.