Sonderforschungsbereich 471: Variation and Evolution in the Lexicon Morphological Typology: Agglutination-Flexion Finiteness: Diachrony and Typology
	Department of Linguistics, University of Konstanz
Home People Research Events Links Databases Contact	A20/A11-related events Workshop: When:  5 - 6 December 2007 Where: Common Room Workshop: ALGORITHMIC MORPHOLOGY When:  3 - 4 November 2007 Where: Hotel Viva in Litzelstetten Workshop: AFFIX SUSPENSION DAY When:  24/06/06 Where: Room G306 Talk: Anthi Revithiadou (University of Rhodes) 1. The prosodic structure of pronominal clitics in Southeastern Greek (with reference to the development of clitic patterns) When: 06/10/05 14:15 Place: Common Room 2. Harmonic Domains in Asia Minor Greek" (with Marc van Oostendorp, Meertens Institute) When: 05/10/05 14:15 Where: G308 Abstract: The Asia Minor dialects of Greek display two patterns of vowel assimilation that look superficially like the vowel harmony that is familiar from Turkish. In this paper, we discuss these patterns and show that they should not be identified as vowel harmony of the Turkic type. In particular, we argue that two disyllabic domains can be identified, one at the beginning of the word and one at the end. These harmonic domains are subject to different principles. Initial-domain harmony is sonority-driven and involves copying of the most sonorous vowel to the least sonorous one. Interestingly, it is also attested in other Greek dialects of the southern zone (e.g., Megisti, Symi, Cypriot). Final-domain harmony is not sonority-driven and shows sensitivity to stress, a property that is not shared with Turkish harmony. More importantly, the two patterns are in complementary distribution: initial-domain harmony is the 'elsewhere' case which applies when the conditions for final-domain harmony are not met. Even though we show that the Greek dialects do not really have a truly Turkic type of vowel harmony, it stands to reason that these patterns have still developed under the influence of language contact with Turkish. This raises some important questions both for language contact as well as for the diachronic aspects of the phenomenon. For instance, why does the 'Turkish' pattern show up at the end of the word? As a speculative answer to this question, we suggest that the language learner has more opportunity to observe the Turkish pattern at the edge between stems and suffixes where (allomorphic) alternations take place. This is possibly assisted by the fact that main stress falls at the end of the word rendering this position perceptually more prominent. Workshop: WEAK WORDS: THEIR ORIGINS AND PROGRESS When: 14-17 April 2005 Where: Schloss Freudental near Konstanz under the joint auspices of Sonderforschungsbereich 471, Universität Konstanz, and Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin. Pictures from the workshop Talk: Aleksandr E. Kibrik (Moscow State University) Lexemes--clitics--morphemes: The Daghestanian evidence When: 24/11/2004 16:15 -18:00 Where: Common Room Pictures from Kibrik’s visit.