High and Low Arguments in Northern and Pontic Greek

On Wednesday 8th November, Christina Sevdali (Ulster University) will present research on "High and Low Arguments in Northern and Pontic Greek".

Talk: High and Low Arguments in Northern and Pontic Greek

This talk will deal with the distribution of the use of the accusative as an indirect object in two major dialect groups of Modern Greek, namely Northern Greek and Pontic Greek. The loss of the dative in Medieval Greek (c. 10th c. AD) resulted in the use of the genitive as an indirect object in the southern varieties and of the accusative in Northern Greek and Asia Minor Greek. As Standard Modern Greek employs the genitive, little attention has been paid to the distribution of the accusative, and our study was aimed to fill that gap by presenting data collected in Northern Greece from speakers of both dialect groups. According to our findings, the accusative is exclusively used in all syntactic domains inherited from the Ancient Greek dative in both dialect groups, but the two groups are kept apart in terms of the obligatoriness vs. optionality or lack of clitic doubling and availability vs. lack of “high” positions, e.g., for external possessors and ethical dative constructions.

The talk will take place at 3pm, and there will be an opportunity to ask questions at the end. There will also be an informal drinks reception afterwards in the Department of Language and Linguistic Science (Deborah Hines Room, 2nd floor). Everyone is welcome!