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Article published In:
Diachronica
Vol. 39:3 (2022) ► pp.369–408

Never just contact

The rise of final auxiliaries in Asia Minor Greek

| University of Cambridge, Queens’ College
ORCID logo | University of Cambridge, Queens’ College

In this article, we investigate the diachronic developments that gave rise to final auxiliaries – a hallmark of head-final syntax – in Asia Minor Greek, a cluster of Greek varieties originally spoken in the area historically known as Asia Minor (present-day Anatolia, Turkey) within the recent developments of the generative framework, i.e., the minimalist program. We propose that the original source for the final auxiliaries in Asia Minor Greek is to be found in Hellenistic Greek conditionals, whereas it can be traced back to Medieval Greek pluperfects. The role of contact with Anatolian Turkish is limited to rendering the available – albeit pragmatically marked – Verb-Auxiliary as the only available order. Importantly, this bottom-up change did not switch Asia Minor Greek from harmonic head-initial to harmonic head-final, but, rather, made it a mixed-directionality language. In minimalist terms, we propose that attrition, one of the ways that language contact manifests itself, targets SEM-uninterpretable features; from this point onwards contact may or may not ensue depending on the feature (mis)match between the two languages.

Keywords: Asia Minor Greek, Anatolian Turkish, final auxiliaries, Final-over-Final Condition, SEM-(un)interpretable features, language contact, attrition
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Phylogeny, historical context and methodology
    • 2.1Phylogeny and historical context
    • 2.2Methodology of the present study
  • 3.Micro-variation in Asia Minor Greek auxiliary constructions
    • 3.1Final auxiliaries in negated nonveridical conditionals (apodosis) in Asia Minor Greek
    • 3.2Final auxiliaries in counterfactual conditionals (protasis) in Asia Minor Greek
    • 3.3Final auxiliaries in counterfactual conditionals (apodosis) in Asia Minor Greek
    • 3.4Final auxiliaries in counterfactual matrix clauses in Asia Minor Greek
    • 3.5Final auxiliaries in pluperfect (anterior in the past) matrix clauses in Asia Minor Greek
  • 4.The syntax of the AUX-V structures
  • 5.Reconstructing the rise of final auxiliaries in Asia Minor Greek: Incipient stage
    • 5.1The original source for final auxiliaries in conditionals is Hellenistic Greek
    • 5.2The original source for final auxiliaries in pluperfects is Medieval Greek
  • 6.Reconstructing the final stage of the rise of final auxiliaries in Asia Minor Greek: Contact-induced change
    • 6.1The sociolinguistic record
    • 6.2Modelling a contact scenario for the rise of final auxiliaries in Asia Minor Greek
    • 6.3Predictions: From head-initial to head-final in Cappadocian
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 21 January 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.17048.neo
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