[B-Greek] FW: [CLASSICS-L] Against all odds: archaic Greek in a modern world
Blue Meeksbay
bluemeeksbay at yahoo.com
Mon Sep 20 11:43:46 EDT 2010
Hi James -
Thanks for the article. Let me ask just one quick question, to you, to any, or
to all. What exactly is meant by this paragraph?
*Studying language change is, in general, notoriously difficult because of
the lack of living speakers who can positively tell us what they think is
ungrammatical or not (in contrast to texts, from which we can only recover
what is grammatical). Investigating the history of Greek is no different
despite the plethora of old texts.*
Without living speakers how do we know that the texts might not also contain
things which would not be considered grammatically correct by those same living
speakers? Perhaps, I am missing something.
Sincerely,
Blue Harris
________________________________
From: James Spinti <JSpinti at Eisenbrauns.com>
To: B-Greek List mail to all <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Mon, September 20, 2010 8:01:49 AM
Subject: [B-Greek] FW: [CLASSICS-L] Against all odds: archaic Greek in a modern
world
Of possible interest to some of you here. Forwarded from the Classics list.
James
________________________________
James Spinti
Marketing Director, Book Sales Division
Eisenbrauns, Good books for more than 35 years
Specializing in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical Studies
jspinti at eisenbrauns dot com
Web: http://www.eisenbrauns.com
Phone: 574-269-2011 ext 226
Fax: 574-269-6788
-----Original Message-----
From: Classical Greek and Latin Discussion Group [mailto:CLASSICS-L at LSV.UKY.EDU]
On Behalf Of June Samaras
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2010 11:58 PM
To: CLASSICS-L at LSV.UKY.EDU
Subject: [CLASSICS-L] Against all odds: archaic Greek in a modern world
July 2010, Online Only
Against all odds: archaic Greek in a modern world
http://www.research-horizons.cam.ac.uk/features/-p-against-all-odds--archaic-greek-in-a-modern-world--p-.aspx
An endangered Greek dialect spoken in Turkey has been identified by Dr
Ioanna Sitaridou as a
linguistic goldmine' because of its closeness to a language spoken 2,000
years ago.
Until Medieval times, the area of Trabzon, on the Black Sea coast of Turkey,
lay at the heart of the
Greek-speaking world. The land of the legendary Amazon kingdom was colonised
by the Greeks
in the 8th and 7th centuries BC and was immortalised in Greek mythology as
the area from which
Jason and his crew of 50 Argonauts began their journey across the Black Sea
on his quest for the Golden Fleece.
Remarkably, despite millennia of change in the cultural and socio-political
history of the surrounding area,
in this mountainous and isolated north-east corner of Asia Minor its people
still speak Greek. The uniqueness
of the dialect - known as Romeyka - is providing a fascinating window on
language past and present, as
Dr Ioanna Sitaridou, University Lecturer in Romance Philology at the Faculty
of Modern and Medieval Languages
and Fellow and Director of Studies in Linguistics at Queens' College, is
discovering.
On the verge of extinction
Romeyka is proving a linguistic goldmine for research because of the
startling number of archaic features
it shares with the Koiné (common) Greek of Hellenistic and Roman times,
spoken at the height of Greek
influence across Asia Minor from the 4th century BC to the 4th century AD.
'Although Romeyka can hardly be described as anything but a Modern Greek
dialect,' explains Dr Sitaridou,
'it preserves an impressive number of grammatical traits that add an Ancient
Greek flavour to the dialect's
structure - traits that have been completely lost from other Modern Greek
varieties.'
As devout Muslims, Romeyka speakers in the Trabzon area were exempt from the
large-scale population
exchange between Greece and Turkey following the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.
Using religion as the defining
criterion to re-settle Christians in Greece and Muslims in Turkey, the
Treaty resulted in the exchange of some
two million people between the two countries. For Pontus, the result was an
exodus of Greek-speaking
Christians, leaving small enclaves of Greek-speaking Muslims in Turkey.
Repeated waves of emigration from Trabzon, coupled with the influence of the
dominant Turkish-speaking
majority, have left the dialect vulnerable to extinction (UNESCO have
designated Pontic Greek as
'definitely endangered'). 'With as few as 5,000 speakers left in the area,
before long Romeyka could be more
of a heritage language than a living vernacular,' says Dr Sitaridou. 'With
its demise would go an unparalleled
opportunity to unlock how the Greek language has evolved. '
Language cartography
Dr Sitaridou's research project is uncovering the secrets of this
little-studied dialect. Her expertise is both
in syntax, which is the study of a language's grammatical rules and sentence
structure, and in how and
why language changes. 'With Romeyka, I have the most wonderful opportunity
to study these two things
in tandem. Not only does the dialect demonstrate elements that are proving
problematic for the current
linguistic theory but it also presents us with a living example of an
evolving language.'
In collaboration with Professor Peter Mackridge (University of Oxford), who
has carried out pioneering research on Pontic dialects since the 1980s, Dr
Sitaridou is also working with Dr Hakan Özkan (University of Münster),
Professor Stavroula Tsiplakou (Open University of Cyprus), the European
Dialect Syntax network (Meertens Institute) and three postgraduate students:
Stergios Chatzikyriakidis, Petros Karatsareas and Dimitrios Michelioudakis.
At the core of her work are fieldtrips to villages in Pontus to map the
cartography of the language - how it works, how much micro-variation there
exists (known as synchrony) and how the morpho-syntactic structure has
changed through time (diachrony). Information is gathered through video and
audio recordings of the villagers telling stories, as well as through
specially structured questionnaires that Dr Sitaridou has designed to
collect the complex data needed for unpicking the structure of a language.
Window on the past
Studying language change is, in general, notoriously difficult because of
the lack of living speakers who can positively tell us what they think is
ungrammatical or not (in contrast to texts, from which we can only recover
what is grammatical). Investigating the history of Greek is no different
despite the plethora of old texts.
'Imagine if we could speak to individuals whose grammar is closer to the
language of the past; not only could we map out a new grammar of a
contemporary dialect but we could also understand some forms of the language
of the past. This is the opportunity that Romeyka presents us with,' says Dr
Sitaridou, who is also a member of the Cambridge Group for Endangered
Languages and Cultures (CELC).
Last of the infinitives
The first results of the study are already providing remarkable insights, as
Dr Sitaridou announced during the first ever linguistics conference on
Romeyka last March at Queens' College, Cambridge: 'Unlike ancient forms of
Greek, use of the infinitive has been lost in all other Greek dialects known
today - so speakers of Modern Greek would say I want that I go instead of I
want to go. But, in Romeyka, not only is the infinitive preserved, making
this essentially the last Greek infinitive of the Greek-speaking world, but
we also find quirky infinitival constructions that have never been observed
before - only perhaps in the Romance languages are there parallel
constructions.'
All the more astonishing, the results so far seem to be indicating that
Romeyka is closer to Hellenistic Koiné than all other Modern Greek dialects,
which are generally considered to have emerged from the later Medieval Greek
spoken in the 7th to the 13th century AD.
Change 'in real time'
Dr Sitaridou's research is ultimately trying to pinpoint how Pontic Greek
evolved. 'We know that Greek has been continuously spoken in Pontus since
ancient times and can surmise that its geographic isolation from the rest of
the Greek-speaking world is an important factor in why the language is as it
is today,' says Dr Sitaridou. 'What we don't yet know is whether Romeyka
emerged in exactly the same way as other Greek dialects but later developed
its own unique characteristics which just happen to resemble archaic Greek.
Or whether it developed from an earlier version of Greek in contrast to the
rest of the Greek dialects and as a result of this more direct lineage, as
well as its isolation from other dialects for centuries, it maintains
archaic features.'
Nevertheless, Romeyka also demonstrates considerable innovation especially
as a result of contact with Turkish. In this respect, Dr Sitaridou is
interested in modelling what influence the contact with Turkish and
Caucasian languages has had on the evolution of the dialect. Given the
linguistic and socio-historic context of Romeyka, she notes that 'in Pontus,
we have near-perfect experimental conditions to assess what may be gained
and what may be lost as a result of language contact.' It is precisely these
questions she will pursue further as the recipient of the prestigious
Stanley J. Seeger Visiting Research Fellowship in Hellenic Studies at
Princeton University in Spring term 2011.
The implications of such research are, however, far more pervasive, since
understanding how language functions could provide some insight into
cultural identity and people's sense of themselves, as well as what happens
when cultures connect.
Dr Sitaridou, whose own great-grandparents were from the region, believes
that the linguistic evidence will help to unravel the thread of language
evolution; we have yet to see whether the thread takes us all the way back
to the time of Jason and the Argonauts and whether more surprises await us.
Cambridge Group for Endangered Languages and Cultures (CELC)
Linguists and anthropologists from across Cambridge have created CELC as a
forum for researchers with common interests not just in seeking to document
languages that are under threat, but also the literatures and ideas about
cultural identity that they help to maintain. For more information, please
visit http://groups.pwf.cam.ac.uk/celc/
For more information, please contact Dr Ioanna Sitaridou (is269 at cam.ac.uk;
http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/is269).
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June Samaras
2020 Old Station Rd
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Canada L5M 2V1
Tel : 905-542-1877
E-mail : june.samaras at gmail.com
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