grammacical gender in cappadocian greek-

THE LOSS OF GRAMMATICAL GENDER IN

CAPPADOCIAN GREEK1

By PETROS KARATSAREAS

University of Cambridge

Winner of the Fifth R. H. Robins Prize of the Philological Society

ABSTRACT

Cappadocian Greek is an extreme case of language changeand dialectal variation among the Modern Greek dialects inhaving lost the tripartite grammatical gender distinction intomasculine, feminine and neuter nominals, a distinctionoperative in Greek since its earliest recorded stages. In thispaper, I argue that this linguistic innovation should not beviewed exclusively as the result of language contact withTurkish, as is most commonly assumed in the literature, butrather as the result of a series of language-internal analogicallevellings of gender mismatches in polydefinite constructions,a process most probably accelerated by language contact butcertainly not triggered by it.

1. A GENDERLESS GREEK VARIETY

In Cappadocian Greek (henceforth Cappadocian), the tripartitegrammatical gender distinction into masculine, feminine and neuternominals has been lost: all nouns behave as neuters, in that theycombine with the originally neuter forms of the various determinersand modifiers, which agree with them. In the variety of the dialectwhich was spoken in the village of Ulaghatsh (UC), for example,the definite article (do for the singular; da for the plural) and the

1I would like to thank Bert Vaux, David Willis and James Clackson as well as theanonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier forms of this paper.Special thanks also go to my friend and fellow linguist Thanasis Giannaris forreading a first draft of this paper and for bringing most helpful references to myattention. Last but not least, I thank the editor of TPhS, Paul Rowlett. This researchwas supported by a scholarship from the Greek State Scholarships Foundation(Idqtla Jqasijèm !posqouièm – IJ! ) and by a bursary from the George and MarieVergottis Fund of the Cambridge European Trust.

Transactions of the Philological Society Volume 107:2 (2009) 196–230

� The author 2009. Journal Compilation � The Philological Society 2009. Published byBlackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ and 350 Main Street, Malden,MA 02148, USA.

modifying adjective ‘good’ (kalo for the singular; kala for theplural) remain invariable in combination with head nouns whoseStandard Modern Greek (SMG) cognates have three differentgender values (1). In SMG, on the other hand, the definite articleand the modifying adjective agree with their head nouns in genderand, therefore, appear in different forms when they combine witheach of these nouns (2):

(1) UCdo kalon do andra ‘the good man’do kalon do neka ‘the good woman’do kalon do pei ‘the good child’

da kalan da andres ‘the good menda kalan da nekes ‘the good women’da kalan da peija ‘the good children’

(Kesisoglou 1951: 29)

(2) SMGoM kalosM anðrasM ‘the good man’iF kaliF jinekaF ‘the good woman’toN kaloN peðiN ‘the good child’

iM kaliM anðresM ‘the good men’iF kalesF jinekesF ‘the good women’taN kalaN peðjaN ‘the good children’2

The UC definite article forms do ⁄da are cognates of the SMGneuter definite article forms to ⁄ ta. The appearance of the definitearticle in front of both the noun and the adjective in (1)(‘definiteness spreading’ or ‘polydefiniteness’) is obligatory in theEastern Greek dialects.3 The final -n in UC kalon and kalan is

2The following abbreviations are used throughout the text: 1: first person, 3: thirdperson, AUG: augment, COP: copula, F: feminine, GEN: genitive, INT: interrogative, M:masculine, N: neuter, NOM: nominative, NONFIN: non-finite, PL: plural, PST: past, SG:singular.

3Polydefinite constructions are also found in SMG: o kalos o anðras lit. ‘the goodthe man’, i kali i jineka lit. ‘the good the woman’, to kalo to peði lit. ‘the good thechild’. Campos and Stavrou (2004) argue that these constructions have differentsyntactic, semantic and phonological properties from monadic constructions (i.e.constructions where the definite article appears only before the adjective, as in (2)) inSMG. For an account of the diachrony of polydefinite constructions in Greek, seeManolessou (2000).

KARATSAREAS – GENDER LOSS IN CAPPADOCIAN GREEK 197

conditioned by a morphophonological rule which inserts an [n] atthe end of adjectives when followed by the definite article. Theforms of these adjectives in other syntactic environments are kalofor the singular and kala for the plural, which are the SMG formsof the respective adjective.

This paper brings forth an investigation of the factors that wereoperative in the language change process whereby grammaticalgender distinctions were lost from Cappadocian varieties such asUC, exemplified in (1).4 In light of the lack of systematic accounts ofthe phenomenon and of various instances in the literature, wherethis loss is attributed to language contact with Turkish, I address thequestion whether the factors which were operative in this processwere language-internal, that is, pertaining to the structure and thedynamics of the Cappadocian linguistic system itself, or language-external, that is, relating to language contact with Turkish.

Following the examination of the agreement patterns in twoCappadocian varieties (UC and Axo Cappadocian), as well as inPontic Greek, one of the closest cognate dialects of Cappadocian, Iargue that the loss of grammatical gender distinctions in the mostinnovative Cappadocian varieties (always with respect to thisfeature) should not be considered exclusively as the outcome oflanguage contact with Turkish. I show that this loss followedthe emergence of an inflectionally active [±HUMAN] feature in theCappadocian nominal inflection, and should rather be viewed as theoutcome of a series of analogical levellings of gender mismatches inpolydefinite constructions, a process most probably accelerated bylanguage contact. Unlike previous considerations of the phenom-enon in the literature, I propose a chronology of the change instages. The discussion of the various aspects of the change and of itsinteractions with other ongoing changes and structural features ofthe dialect further serves as a starting point for theoreticalconsiderations of a wider scope, such as the diachrony ofclassification systems like gender and the [±HUMAN] feature or

4Grammatical gender distinctions were lost from the majority of the Cappadocianvarieties (Dawkins 1916: 87). Some traces of grammatical gender, however, are foundin the varieties which were spoken in the villages of Sinasos, Zalela, Potamia andDelmeso. These are found in the use of the masculine and feminine forms of theaccusative of the definite article ton and tin when the article immediately precedes thenoun, i.e. without the use of an attributive adjective between the two, as in PotamiaCappadocian: (i) ipen ton deirmendZi ‘she said to the.M.ACC. miller’ (Dawkins 1916:456); (ii) na skotosun tin gata ‘that they kill the.F.ACC cat’ (Dawkins 1916: 464).

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the interplay of language-internal and language-external factors inlanguage change.The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 is a very brief

introduction to the sociohistorical and linguistic background ofCappadocian, focusing on its linguistic isolation from othervarieties of Modern Greek (MG) and the linguistic innovationsthat resulted. Section 3 serves as an illustration of the changeundergone by Cappadocian by sketching the role of grammaticalgender in SMG and Cappadocian. Section 4 presents otherrecorded cases of reduction and ⁄or loss of grammatical genderdistinctions from the history of other languages, followed byextensive discussion of the Cappadocian case. The concludingsection 5 discusses which factors could be shown to have played arole in the process of gender loss in Cappadocian but were notaddressed in the present paper, thus pointing towards some issuesfor future research.In accounting for the loss of grammatical gender distinctions in

Cappadocian, I focus mainly on data from UC, but reference willoften be made to the varieties of other Cappadocian villages, whenappropriate.

2. CAPPADOCIAN GREEK ON THE LANGUAGE MAP

2.1. Historical and linguistic background

Cappadocian is a MG dialect which belongs to the Eastern Greekdialectal branch along with Pontic Greek and the Greek ofMariupol (Anastasiadis 1995; Arapopoulou 2001; Dawkins 1910;1916; 1937; 1940; Kontossopoulos 1994). Our knowledge ofCappadocian is almost exclusively based on R. M. Dawkins’documentation and description of the dialect, published in 1916,and on a number of later descriptions of the varieties of specificCappadocian villages by prominent Greek linguists (inter aliaAndriotis 1948; Costakis 1964; 1968; Kesisoglou 1951; Mav-rochalyvidis & Kesisoglou 1960).The term ‘Cappadocian’ essentially describes a group of mutually

related MG varieties which were spoken in a number of villages inCentral Anatolia (contemporary Turkey) until 1924, when Greeceand Turkey exchanged populations on the basis of religious identityas a criterion in accordance with the Treaty of Lausanne. Following


the relocation of Cappadocian-speaking populations to manydifferent parts of continental Greece, and in light of the heavystandardisation pressures from SMG within the country, Cappa-docian was thought to have died out until very recently, when MarkJanse and Dimitris Papazachariou announced that they haddiscovered native speakers of Cappadocian in parts of Centraland Northern Greece (Janse & Papazachariou 2007). Among thesenative speakers were middle-aged, third-generation Cappadocianswho seem to have preserved Cappadocian thanks to positiveattitudes towards the dialect. According to Janse and Papazachar-iou, the documentation of these people’s Cappadocian will result ina new grammar, dictionary and collection of texts, none of which(to the best of my knowledge), has been published to date.

Long before the population exchange, the Greek-speaking peopleof the area had come into contact with Turkish-speaking people,dating back to the invasion of the Seljuk Turks in parts ofCappadocia even before the defeat of the Byzantine troops atManzikert in 1071 (Janse 2002). The subsequent separation of theCappadocian people from the rest of the Greek-speaking contin-gent, the consecutive dehellenisation of much of Asia Minor, andthe further disintegration and fall of the late Byzantine Empire in1453 resulted in Cappadocian developing in isolation for manycenturies (Dawkins 1916: 1).

2.2. The outcomes of linguistic isolation

The fact that Cappadocian developed in isolation compared to thevast majority of the MG dialects, in combination with the intenseand long-standing contact with surrounding Turkish and concom-itant extensive Cappadocian–Turkish bilingualism in the Cappado-cian villages, brought about a number of innovative linguisticchanges that significantly differentiate Cappadocian from SMG aswell as from other MG dialects, even from those with which it is aclose cognate, like Pontic. Such changes are found in all compo-nents of the grammar, from phonology and morphology to syntax,pragmatics and discourse.

Language contact with Turkish is most commonly taken a priorias the principal cause of many of these changes (Thomason &Kaufman 1988: 215–22; Winford 2003: 83–4; 2005: 402–9). It is truethat the synchronic presence of a certain number of linguistic


constructions and phenomena in the Cappadocian linguistic systemcan indeed be attributed to language contact. The Cappadocianpluperfect is a relevant example (see also Winford 2005: 405–6). InSMG, the pluperfect is formed periphrastically, and consists of thepast tense of the auxiliary verb exo ‘to have’ with the so-called ‘non-finite’ form of the verb in question. In the pluperfect of SMG, it isthe auxiliary verb which inflects for person, whereas the non-finiteform remains unchanged (3a). In UC, the pluperfect is formedperiphrastically and consists of the past tense of the verb in questionand the 3SG form of the imperfect of the copular verb ime ‘to be’.In this construction, it is the past tense of the verb which inflects forperson, whereas the copular verb form remains unchanged (3b).This innovative morphological pattern seems to have been modelledon the Turkish pluperfect in (3c), which originates in a periphrasiscomprising the so-called ‘di-past’ and the 3SG form of the past of thecopular marker. As in the Cappadocian case, in the Turkishpluperfect, it is the past tense of the verb which inflects for person,whereas the copular marker remains the same.

(3) a. SMGVerb Pluperfectlino ixa liseiuntie I.had untie-NONFIN

‘I had untied’b. UC

Verb Past Pluperfectlino e-lis-a e-lis-a itonuntie AUG-untie-1SG.PST AUG-untie-1SG.PST COP.PST.3SG‘I untied’ ‘I had untied’

(Kesisoglou 1951: 39)c. Turkish

Verb Past Pluperfectcoz- coz-du-m coz-du-m idi (> cozdumdu)untie untie-PST-1SG untie-PST-1SG COP.PST.3SG‘I untied’ ‘I had untied’

On the other hand, the trigger for an equally high number oflanguage changes in Cappadocian was language-internal. Thepresence in the Cappadocian inventory of phonemes like thepalato-alveolar fricatives ⁄ S ⁄ and ⁄ Z ⁄ (UC a'Sim ‘silver’ – cf. SMG


a'simi; Zi'mar ‘dough’, cf. SMG zi'mari), or the post-alveolarfricatives ⁄ tS ⁄ and ⁄dZ ⁄ (UC tSi'lo ‘to roll’, cf. SMG ci'lo; dZu'fali‘head’, cf. SMG ce'fali), which also form part of the Turkishphonemic inventory, does not necessarily have to be attributed tolanguage contact, as these phonemes are also found in a number ofother MG dialects, where they most probably emerged language-internally after regular processes of phonological change (e.g.Cypriot Greek Serin ‘hand’, cf. SMG ceri; maxa'Z:a ‘shops’, cf.SMG maVa'ZJa; tSe'rin ‘candle’, cf. SMG ce'ri; ka'ndZel:in ‘balus-ter’, cf. SMG ka¢�elo).5

Finally, in numerous other cases the causal factors of changeinclude both language-internal and language-external ones, as inthe case of the Cappadocian head-final constructions (SOV,possessor–possessee word order), whereby previously markedconstituent orders became the default (unmarked) orders underthe influence of Turkish.

So, into which of the above categories of language change doesthe loss of grammatical gender in Cappadocian fall? The search foran answer to this question begins with a brief description ofgrammatical gender as a morphosyntactic feature in SMG andCappadocian.

3. ILLUSTRATING THE LINGUISTIC INNOVATION: GRAMMATICAL GENDER

IN STANDARD MODERN GREEK AND CAPPADOCIAN

3.1. Standard Modern Greek

In SMG as well as in the vast majority of the MG dialects, nouns,adjectives, determiners, a number of pronouns and a few numeralsare marked for one of the three genders: masculine, feminine orneuter. As shown by Ralli (2002), gender is an intrinsic property ofSMG noun stems and derivational affixes. Nouns are assigned agender mainly by means of morphological information relatinginter alia to the feature of inflectional class or to processes of wordformation or, for noun stems which are underspecified for gender,

5One anonymous reviewer notes that language contact with Romance should notbe excluded as a possible explanation for the development of such phonemes in MGdialects like Cretan and Cypriot. As far as Cypriot Greek is concerned, the interestedreader is referred to Davy and Panayotou (2001), who support the idea that thepalatalisation of dental and velar stops and fricatives in the dialect pre-dates theFrankish period.


by means of agreement in syntax. SMG, therefore, has a formalgrammatical gender system.In SMG the three genders are primarily manifested in agreement

patterns. The noun phrase forms the main agreement domain in thelanguage, with agreement also extending to predicate argumentconstructions (4):

(4) SMGa. Afti i teseris tixi

this.M.NOM.PL the.M.NOM.PL four.M.NOM wall.M.NOM.PLine kokini.are red.M.NOM.PL‘These four walls are red.’

b. Aftes i teseris fustesthis.F.NOM.PL the.F.NOM.PL four.F.NOM skirt.F.NOM.PLine kokines.are red.F.NOM.PL‘These four skirts are red.’

c. Afta ta tesera vivliathis.N.NOM.PL the.N.NOM.PL four.N.NOM book.N.NOM.PLine kokina.are red.N.NOM.PL‘These four books are red.’

In the noun phrase afti i teseris tixi ‘these four walls’ in (4a), themasculine head noun tixi acts as the controller6 which determinesthe grammatical genders, as well as the case and number, of thedemonstrative afti, the definite article i and the numeral teseris.Beyond the domain of the noun phrase, tixi determines the genderof the predicate kokini. Similarly, the nouns fustes and vivlia in (4b)and (4c) determine the gender of their targets in their respectivenoun phrases and clauses.

6For an extensive discussion of gender in the languages of the world and of therelevant terminology (‘controller’, ‘target’, etc.) see Corbett (1991).


3.2. Cappadocian

As was seen in the noun phrases in (1), in Cappadocian, the formsof the definite article and the modifying adjective remain invariablein combining with head nouns whose SMG cognates have threedifferent gender values (UC do kalon do andra ‘the good man’, dokalon do neka ‘the good woman’, do kalon do pei ‘the good child’; cf.SMG o kalos anðras, i kali jineka, to kalo peði in (2)).

In UC, it is the neuter form which is used over the others in allthe nominals which are marked for gender in SMG (Table 1).

Gender agreement has been lost in UC in all the syntacticenvironments where it appears in SMG, namely both within thenoun phrase and beyond it, in predicate–argument constructions (5):

(5) UCSano-ne mi ito do xerifos?crazy-COP.3SG INT this the man‘Is this man crazy?’ (Kesisoglou 1951: 156)

In the noun phrase ito do xerifos in (5), the demonstrative ito andthe definite article do relate to the head noun xerifos. Notice thatboth targets appear in the invariable forms shown in Table 1. Thehead noun xerifos is a Turkish loan word (cf. colloquial Turkishherif ‘guy’) bearing the Greek inflectional ending -os, which is theinflectional ending most saliently related to the masculine gender in

Table 1. Grammatical gender in SMG and UC

SMG UC

Adjectives:‘small’ mikrosM mikriF mikroN mikro

‘black’ mavrosM mavriF mavroN mavro

Participles:‘hungry’ pinasmenosM pinasmeniF pinasmenoN pinasmeno

‘lost, dead’ xamenosM xameniF xamenoN xanimeno

Articles:Definite oM iF toN do

Indefinite enasM miaF enaN ena

Pronouns:Proximal demonstrative aftosM aftiF aftoN ato, ito

Indefinite ‘other’ alosM aliF aloN talo (< to alo)Numerals:‘one’ enasM miaF enaN ena

‘three’ treisM,F triaN tria


SMG. It is reasonable, therefore, to assume that at some earlierpoint in the history of UC, xerifos was marked with masculinegender. Concerning the predicate–argument agreement, the pred-icate sano ‘crazy’ appears in the originally neuter form of theadjective (cf. Sılli Greek tsannosM-tsanniF-tsannoN; Costakis 1968),illustrating the loss of agreement in this domain as well.7

4. THE INTERPLAY OF LANGUAGE-INTERNAL AND LANGUAGE-EXTERNAL

FACTORS IN THE LOSS OF GRAMMATICAL GENDER

4.1. Grammatical-gender loss in the history of languages

Cases of grammatical-gender reduction and ⁄or loss such as the oneobserved in Cappadocian are not unheard of in the history oflanguages. Ibrahim (1973: 86) considers the loss of the variousdistinctive gender markers of the nouns (usually due to phonolo-gical changes), and of the inflections which mark agreementbetween nouns and other word classes which agree with the nounin gender, as the two major conditions necessary for the loss ofgender distinctions in languages with formal grammatical-gendersystems like Greek (see also Aikhenvald 2004).A familiar example is English. Old English had a formal

grammatical-gender system, reminiscent of that of Greek. Nounsand other nominals were marked with one of the three gendervalues, masculine, feminine or neuter (6):

(6) Old Englishse cyning s�e�o cw�en þæt s _cipthis.M king.M this.F queen.F this.N ship.N‘this king’ ‘this queen’ ‘this ship’

7As can be seen from the noun xerifos in (5) and as will also be elaborated below(section 4.2.1), nouns in Cappadocian retain inflectional endings that are mostsaliently related to specific gender values in SMG and other MG dialects. It wasalready mentioned in section 3.1 that gender is an intrinsic property of SMG nounstems but not of inflectional endings. This explains why the same inflectional endingcan be found in words that have three different gender values: tix-os ‘wall.M’ versusipir-os ‘continent.F’ versus ðas-os ‘forest.N’. The gender of nouns is manifested inagreement patterns between the noun and its various determiners and modifiers(articles, pronouns, adjectives) within the noun phrase and in predicate–argumentconstructions. It is, therefore, already clear that the loss of inherent gender inCappadocian nouns is closely related to the loss of grammatical gender agreement inthe nouns’ modifiers.


During the Middle English period, the language lost the grammat-ical-gender system, which was replaced by a pronominal gendersystem (Corbett 1991: 5), a distinction preserved only in the thirdperson personal and reflexive pronouns: nouns denoting malehuman entities are referred to by he, nouns denoting female humanentities are referred to by she and nouns denoting non-humanentities are referred to by it, irrespective of their biological sex. Theformal-agreement system of Old English has been lost in Present-Day English, as shown by the glosses in (6).

Kastovsky (2000) shows that the loss of grammatical-genderdistinctions in Middle English nouns was a complex processinvolving a restructuring of the morphological system of thelanguage triggered by the decay of nominal inflectional endings,itself caused by the phonetic attrition of word-final syllables. Thiswas followed by the levelling of the inflectional endings of adjectivesand other modifiers, which were no longer able to support a formal-agreement system (Curzan 2003: 44).

In order to account for the fact that gender was lost only inEnglish despite the fact that nearly all Germanic languagesunderwent similar phonological changes at some point in theirlinguistic history, historical linguists have pointed to contact withOld Norse (Curzan 2003: 48–54; Ibrahim 1973: 89–90).8 Bearing inmind, though, the language-internal processes already under way inthe language, Curzan seems to be on the right track in assumingthat ‘in the case of Middle English, the ‘‘creole-like’’ features ofinflectional reduction and loss of grammatical gender seem to havebeen incipient in the language and accelerated by language contact’(2003: 53).9

A similar change scenario will be shown for the case of genderloss in Cappadocian.

8What has been suggested for the Middle English–Old Norse contact situation is aprocess of analogical levelling of different sets of inflectional endings which combinedwith cognate nouns in the two languages (Curzan 2003: 52; Ibrahim 1973: 90).

9Apart from Old Norse, language contact with Anglo-Norman might also beresponsible for some of these ‘creole-like’ features of Middle English. The authorwould like to thank the anonymous reviewer who brought this to his attention.


4.2. Grammatical-gender loss in Cappadocian

The loss of grammatical-gender distinctions in Cappadocian isfound in various discussions of the contact-induced changesobserved in the dialect which seemingly imply that languagecontact with Turkish was the decisive factor in this process oflanguage change. Janse holds that ‘the loss of gender distinctionsis due to Turkish influence, since Turkish has no grammaticalgender’ (2002: 366), a view often encountered elsewhere in theliterature:

Dawkins considers the loss of grammatical gender which isalmost complete in Cappadocia […] to be due to Turkishinfluence; Turkish has no gender. (Thomason & Kaufman1988: 219–20)

Again under Turkish influence, there was a progressive loss ofgender distinctions, especially in South Cappadocian. (Winford2005: 405)

In most cases when gender was lost in Indo-European, its losscan be attributed to some substratum, or adstratum language[…]. In other cases the influence of genderless languages are[sic] easier to prove: Turkish in the case of Asia Minor Greek[Cappadocian]. (Matasovic 2004: 77)

The loss of gender as a nominal category has occurred […]dialectally, in Modern Greek [Cappadocian] due to contactwith Turkish. (Igartua 2006: 56)

The view echoed in the above quotations is probably based onthe fact that Dawkins includes gender loss in a list ofCappadocian grammatical phenomena which he attributes tocontact with Turkish (1916: 203). It is clear, however, from otherparts of his description of the variety that he did not see contactwith Turkish as the causal factor that set the language-changeprocess of gender loss in motion, but rather as an acceleratingfactor that acted upon a change already initiated language-internally long before the Turkish invasion of Cappadocia (1916:116). Given the attention that contact explanations for thechanges observed in Cappadocian have received, they are treatedfirst in section 4.2.1.


4.2.1. Language-external factors

Contact-related explanations for the loss of grammatical gender inCappadocian refer to the absence of grammatical-gender distinc-tions in Turkish (7):

(7) Turkisha. Bu yaslı adam hasta.

this old man ill‘This old man is ill.’

b. Bu yaslı kadın hasta.this old woman ill‘This old woman is ill.’

c. Bu yaslı agac hasta.this old tree ill‘This old tree is ill.’ (meaning ‘diseased’)

In the noun phrases in (7), the proximal demonstrative bu and themodifying adjective yaslı ‘old’ remain invariable in combinationwith head nouns denoting entities of different (or no) sex (adam‘man’, kadın ‘woman’, agac ‘tree’). The same holds for the adjectivalpredicate hasta ‘ill’.10 The Cappadocian data exhibit the sameinvariability, which is correctly used as evidence illustrating the lossof grammatical-gender distinctions in the variety.

A language-contact scenario based on these data would assumeextensive Cappadocian–Turkish bilingualism in the speech com-munity, a prerequisite for contact-induced changes to occur in anylanguage-contact situation. Indeed, as already mentioned, bilin-gualism in the area is well established. As for UC, it is considered tobe one of the varieties in which the Turkish influence was mostpervasive owing to the large and increasing Turkish population inthe village and the subsequent extensive bilingualism (Dawkins1916: 18; Kooij & Revithiadou 2001).

Bilingual speakers, and especially bilingual children, are seen asthe agents of change by some current theories of contact-inducedlanguage change. As such, they are able to draw upon the resources,structures and elements of their two linguistic systems and to usethem relatively freely. According to these theories, bilingual

10Turkish does not have overt marking of the 3SG on nominal predicates of the ‘x isy’ type (Goksel & Kerslake 2005).


speakers resort to this sort of language ‘mixing’ in an attempt toreduce the processing overload caused by the availability of twolinguistic systems in their minds, which can differ in variousgrammatical aspects. To this end, they eliminate the linguisticelements or features which cause them cognitive inconvenience, inthe sense of making it hard for them to differentiate between thetwo linguistic systems (Field 2002; Matras 1998; 2000; Matras &Sakel 2007).11

In the Cappadocian case, the cues that Cappadocian–Turkishbilingual children would have in order to establish the absence ofgrammatical-gender distinctions in Turkish would necessarily comefrom the invariability of elements modifying head nouns as in (7).The contact mechanism at hand, then, would be the non-acquisitionof the [determiner ⁄modifier + head noun] agreement rule of Greekin bilingual first-language acquisition. In other words, Cappado-cian–Turkish bilingual children would fail to acquire the Greek rulethat conditions the agreement of determiners and modifiers of anysort with their head nouns in terms of gender, on account of theabsence of such a rule from the Turkish grammatical system (seealso Brendemoen 1999: 537).This contact-induced change process would be supported by the

need of Cappadocian–Turkish bilingual children to reduce theprocessing overload caused by the differences in the underlyingrepresentations of nouns in the two languages. If the assumptionsof the above-mentioned theories hold true, bilingual childrenpresumably eliminated the gender feature from the underlyingrepresentations of the Cappadocian nouns to make them more

11The setting in which such ‘mixing’ takes place is a bi- or multilingual linguisticcommunity, where more than one language is spoken and is in everyday use. Mostcommonly, the different languages of a multilingual linguistic community will bespoken, at least at an incipient stage, by the members of different ethnic anddemographic groups which come into cultural, economic, political and scientificcontact within that linguistic community (Oksaar 1996). Thomason and Kaufman(1988) elaborated greatly on the notion of sociolinguistic dominance between thedifferent linguistic groups, to which they assigned a central role in the process ofcontact-induced language change. In their framework, different types of change willoccur depending on whether speakers of the sociolinguistically dominant or of thesociolinguistically dominated language will be the agents of change. The issue ofsocial pressures and dominance within a multilingual community is of centralimportance to the study of contact-induced language change phenomena. The focuson the more structural and psychological approach to the Cappadocian case,however, as well as limitations of space, do not allow for further elaboration on thisaspect of contact-induced language change in the present paper.


‘uniform’ with the representations of Turkish nouns, which lack thegender feature.

A view favouring a contact explanation for the loss of gender inCappadocian could additionally be corroborated by the fact thatthe variety did not undergo any major phonological changes whichcould cause the sort of confusion and morphological restructuringobserved in the cases of gender loss mentioned in section 4.1(Middle English, other Germanic languages, Romance languages).The only phonological change worth mentioning that did have animpact on the variety’s structure was the loss of word-finalunstressed high vowels according to the phonological rule in (8):

(8) High Vowel Deletion RuleV

high�stress

� � fi Ø ⁄__#

This rule affected mainly the very large group of originally neuternouns which ended in an unstressed ⁄ i ⁄ (9a), but also had an impacton a number of originally feminine nouns with the same ending(9b):

(9) UCa. 'spiti ‘house’ > spit

'xteni ‘comb’ > xtenb. 'nifi ‘bride’ > nif

'strosi ‘mattress’ > stroS(Kesisoglou 1951: 15)

This phonological process caused confusion as to which genderwords ending in a consonant belonged to, as shown by originallyfeminine nouns combining with neuter inflectional endings (10):

(10) Malakopı CappadocianSingular PluralNominative Genitive Nominative

‘house’ spit spitju spitja‘bride’ nif nifju

(cf. SMG nifis)nifja(cf. SMG nifes)

(Dawkins 1916: 115)


However, this ending was left unaffected in word-final stressedposition, and so were the rest of the inflectional endings which aremost saliently related to specific gender values in SMG and whichare all preserved in Cappadocian. These are the endings -os formasculine nouns, -a and -i for feminine nouns, and -o for neuternouns (Chila-Markopoulou 2003: 145).

(11) SMG UCa. 'ipnosM ‘sleep’ 'jipnos

'ðjavolosM ‘devil’ 'javolosb. kar'ðjaF ‘heart’ kar'ja

a'vli F ‘yard’ ne'vlic. 'ksiloN ‘wood’ 'ksilo

xar'tiN ‘paper’ xar'ti

Therefore, the conditions that Ibrahim considers to be decisive inlanguage-internal cases of gender loss are not met by Cappado-cian.Given the absence of any major phonological changes in

Cappadocian and the presence in its nominals of the mostsalient inflectional endings related to specific gender values inSMG and in other MG dialects, the selection of the neutergender by Cappadocian–Turkish bilinguals (over the masculineor the feminine) as the new agreement controller could beaccounted for on the basis of data coming from the bilingualSMG–Turkish speech of the Muslim community of the island ofRhodes. Georgalidou, Spyropoulos, Kaili & Revithiadou (2005)report on the confusion and avoidance of gender marking inSMG by SMG–Turkish bilingual speakers and on their use ofthe neuter, which they consider to be the default gender value inSMG (12):12

12That neuter is the default gender value and is, therefore, unmarked in Greek canalso be supported by the fact that (a) it is the value used in syntactic genderresolution when the conjoined nouns denote [–HUMAN] entities, irrespective of theirgrammatical gender; (b) it is the gender to which morphologically non-integratedloan words are generally assigned, unless they denote [+HUMAN] entities; (c) it is thegender used for nominalisations (Holton, Mackridge & Philippaki-Warburton 1997:501, 250, 456–7).


(12) Rhodian Muslim Greeka. mecalo hia

big.N aunt.F‘the elder aunt’

b. irte skilos ... pinasmeno itacame.3SG dog.M hungry.N was‘The dog came ... it was hungry.’

The data in (12) are reminiscent of the contact mechanismsproposed for Cappadocian, where gender agreement has been lostboth within the noun phrase (12a) and beyond it, in predicate–argument constructions (12b).

However, a contact explanation such as the one presented here,which resorts to postulating the failure of acquiring the [deter-miner ⁄modifier + head noun] agreement rule and the subsequentloss of gender values from the feature bundles of Cappadociannouns, does not account for the fact that the variety may have lostgender agreement between determiners ⁄modifiers and head nounsbut has retained number agreement, as shown in (1) (do kalon doandra ‘the good man’ vs. da kalan da andres ‘the good men’, etc.).

Number agreement in noun phrases does not occur in Turkish.Modifying adjectives remain invariable when combining with theirhead nouns irrespective of number (13):

(13) Turkishiyi adam ‘good man’iyi adamlar ‘good men’

Agreement in number is also active in Cappadocian in copularconstructions, as shown in the data from Aravan Cappadocian in(14) (Dawkins 1916: 148):

(14) Aravan Cappadociananastenar-me ‘I am ill’anastenar-se ‘you (SG) are ill’anastenar-ne ‘he ⁄ she ⁄ it is ill’

anastenarja-meste ‘we are ill’anastenarja-ste ‘you (PL) are ill’anastenarja-nde ‘they are ill’


In Turkish copular constructions of this type the predicate remainsinvariable across the paradigm (15):

(15) Turkishhasta-yım ‘I am ill’hasta-sın ‘you (SG) are ill’hasta(-dır) ‘he ⁄ she ⁄ it is ill’

hasta-yız ‘we are ill’hasta-sınız ‘you (PL) are ill’hasta-(dır)lar ‘they are ill’

These data call for a readjustment of the contact hypothesiswhereby Cappadocian–Turkish bilingual children would fail toacquire only part of the Greek morphosyntactic agreement rule,namely agreement in gender, but not in number. This, however, isnot an economical explanation. As will be shown in the nextsubsection, a language-internal process of change leading to thedecline of grammatical-gender distinctions in Cappadocian wasalready ongoing at the onset of the Cappadocian–Turkish contact,a process most probably accelerated by the subsequent languagecontact but certainly not triggered by it.

4.2.2. Language-internal factors

Dawkins comments on the combination of the originally neuterforms of adjectives with head nouns of originally different genderby quoting Sarantidis (1899), who documented the followingexample from a proverb from Sinasos Cappadocian (16):

(16) Sinasos Cappadocianto kalo o locosthe.N good.N the.M speech.M‘the fair speech’ (Sarantidis 1899: 150)

In (16), the head noun locos is of masculine gender and so is itsdeterminer o. The modifying adjective kalo, though, and itsdeterminer to are both of neuter gender. According to Sarantidis,in Sinasos Cappadocian, nouns denoting [–HUMAN] entities combinewith modifiers which take the neuter form whatever the grammat-ical gender of the head noun may be. In contrast, the modifiers of


nouns denoting [+HUMAN] entities agree normally with their headnouns in grammatical gender.13

Dawkins uses the Greek terms œlwtva [empsixa] and ¥wtva[apsixa] to denote [+HUMAN] and [–HUMAN] nouns respectively, andreports a similar situation in Pontic, which also forms part of theEastern Greek dialectal branch. He correctly identifies a connectionbetween the Pontic situation and Sarantidis’ Sinasos Cappadociandata:

[I]t [the œlwtva versus ¥wtva distinction] is the stage whicheverywhere in Cappadocian preceded the present entirelygenderless state of the adjectives. This entire loss of gendercan hardly but be due to the influence of genderless Turkish.But the disuse of the m. and f. adjectival endings beforeœlwtva, but not before ¥wtva, in Pontos and, to judge fromthis evidence from Sinasos, in the least Turkised of theCappadocian dialects, shews that the germ of this loss isinvolved in the distinction between œlwtva and ¥wtva, adistinction which is certainly not of Turkish origin. It wouldseem that the Turkish influence found already existing a loss ofgrammatical gender or at least a tendency to lose grammaticalgender, and carried this further to its own conditions of totalabsence of any distinctions of gender. (Dawkins 1916: 116)

It is clear, therefore, that Dawkins did not consider contact withTurkish as the initiating trigger for the loss of gender distinctions inthe Cappadocian varieties.

The connection between Pontic and Cappadocian regarding thedecline of grammatical-gender distinctions is also hinted at by theGreek linguists who described the varieties of specific Cappadocianvillages and other closely related Greek varieties in the 1950s and1960s (Mavrochalyvidis & Kesisoglou 1951: 81 for Axo Cappado-cian; Andriotis 1948: 46 for Pharasa Greek). Horrocks considersthe breakdown of the grammatical-gender distinction as aninnovation of the Eastern Greek dialects (1997: 313–14), withouttaking a clear position as to whether this innovation was triggeredlanguage-internally or language-externally. Despite all these occur-rences in the literature, however, various historical linguists still talk

13Henceforth nouns denoting [+HUMAN] entities will be referred to as ‘[+HUMAN]nouns’ and nouns denoting [–HUMAN] entities will be referred to as ‘[–HUMAN] nouns’.


of gender loss in Cappadocian as being exclusively due to languagecontact with Turkish (see beginning of this section), whereas eventhose who recognise the connections between the various EasternGreek varieties do not provide a systematic account of the changeor some sort of chronology of it. The aim of the next subsection isto fill this gap in the history of Cappadocian.

4.2.1.1. œlwtva and ¥wtva in Pontic and Cappadocian

Pontic is a MG dialect which was spoken widely in the Pontos areaon what is today the Turkish coast of the Black Sea over about thesame period as Cappadocian was spoken in Central Anatolia.Pontic is still spoken in areas of mainland Greece by thedescendants of Pontic refugees, while some Pontic varieties are stillspoken in areas of Turkey (Mackridge 1987; 1999). Pontic belongsto the Eastern Greek dialectal branch and is thus genetically relatedto Cappadocian. Like the other Eastern Greek varieties, Ponticdeveloped in relative isolation from the rest of the Greek-speakingcontingent and in contact with Turkish. Compared to Cappado-cian, however, language contact between Pontic and Turkish wasnot as intense or as long-standing, and was intensified only afterthe fall of the Empire of Trebizond in 1461 and the subsequentincorporation of Pontos into the Ottoman Empire. This, as well asother differences of sociohistorical nature between the Cappado-cian–Turkish and Pontic–Turkish cultural contacts, can explain thedifferences in the extent of linguistic ‘borrowing’ in the two MGdialects (in the sense of Thomason and Kaufman 1988).In Pontic, the tripartite grammatical gender distinction into

masculine, feminine and neuter of SMG and of the vast majority ofthe MG dialects is preserved. Nouns, adjectives, determiners, anumber of pronouns and some numerals are marked for gender. Aselection of nominals is summarised in Table 2 (data fromPapadopoulos 1955).14

Apart from gender, a further distinction based on the [±HUMAN]feature is operative in Pontic. The two features interact inagreement both within the noun phrase and in the clause domain.In this variety, [–HUMAN] nouns neutralise gender distinctions in the

14The Pontic data show extensive intradialectal variation in some forms.Alternative forms of various of the nominals included in Table 2 were not includedfor simplicity reasons.


plural, and behave as neuters in that they combine with the neuterform of the definite article in both the nominative and theaccusative, thus exhibiting neuter-like syncretism (17):

(17) Pontica. Masculine b. Feminine c. Neuter[+HUMAN] [–HUMAN] [+HUMAN] [–HUMAN]‘man’ ‘month’ ‘woman’ ‘chicken’ ‘village’

NOM.SG. o andras o minas i jineka i kosara to xorionACC.SG. ton andran ton minan tin jinekan tin kosaran to xorionNOM.PL. i andres ta minas15 i jinekes ta kosaras15 ta xoriaACC.PL. tus andras ta minas ti jinekes ta kosaras ta xoria

This has repercussions for the agreement between head nouns andtheir modifiers, as adjectives modifying [–HUMAN] nouns appear intheir neuter form irrespective of the grammatical gender of theirhead nouns. This extends to both numbers, leading to a sort of

Table 2. Grammatical gender in SMG and Pontic

SMG Pontic

Nouns:‘man’ anðrasM andrasM‘woman’ jinekaF jinekaF

‘child’ peðiN peðinN

Articles:Definite oM iF toN oM iF toN

Adjectives:‘good’ kalosM kaliF kaloN kalosM kalesaF kalonN

‘heavy’ varisM variaF variN varisM varesaF variNPronouns:Proximal demonstrative aftosM aftiF aftoN autosM auteF autoN

Indefinite ‘other’ alosM aliF aloN alosM aleF aloN

Numerals:‘one’ enasM miaF enaN enasM,F enanN

‘three’ trisM,F triaN trisM,F triaN

15The differences in the inflectional endings between andr-es and min-as, on onehand, and jinek-es and kosar-as, on the other, are conditioned by a morphologicalrule whereby the nominative and accusative plural of [–HUMAN] nouns take theinflectional ending of the accusative plural of the respective inflectional paradigm(Spyropoulos & Kakarikos 2007). The syncretism of nominative and accusative infavour of the latter in the plural of [–HUMAN] nouns is considered by Horrocks as asign of assimilation to neuter declensional patterns (1997: 315).


mismatch between the determiner of the modifying adjective, onone hand, and the determiner of the head noun, on the other, giventhat definiteness spreading is obligatory in Pontic (Drettas 1997;Tompaidis 1980) (18):

(18) Pontic[–HUMAN]to kalon o minas ‘the good month’to kalon i kosara ‘the good chicken’

ta kala ta minas ‘the good months’ta kala ta kosaras ‘the good chickens’

In the noun phrases in (18), the adjectives appear in the neuter formbecause their head nouns denote [–HUMAN] entities. In the singularof these noun phrases, the definite article that appears before theadjective agrees with it in grammatical gender and is, therefore, inthe neuter form to, and so does the definite article that appearsbefore the head noun and is, therefore, in the masculine andfeminine form o and i respectively.The agreement patterns in [+HUMAN] nouns present a slightly

more complex picture. In the latest documented stage of Pontic,as is described by Papadopoulos (1955), Oikonomidis (1958) andDrettas (1997), adjectives modifying [+HUMAN] masculine andfeminine nouns appear in their masculine form in the plural, asin (19):

(19) Pontici kali i andres ‘the good men’i kali i jinekes ‘the good women’

This, however, seems to be a later development of Pontic, as thereare no traces of such an agreement pattern or any similarphenomena to be found either in Cappadocian or any other MGdialect of the greater area of Asia Minor and Anatolia (Pharasa,Sılli, Livisi, Demirdesi). It is, therefore, reasonable to assume that atan earlier stage in the history of Pontic, adjectives modifying[+HUMAN] nouns agreed ‘normally’ with their head nouns ingrammatical gender in both numbers, a stage illustrated in (20):


(20) Earlier Pontic[+HUMAN]o kalon o andras ‘the good man’16

i kalesa i jineka ‘the good woman’to kalon to peðin ‘the good child’

i kali i andres ‘the good men’i kaleses i jinekes ‘the good women’ta kala ta peðia ‘the good children’

Neuter agreement with [–HUMAN] nouns is also found in thepredicate–argument domain (21):

(21) Pontica. I para en asimenon.

the.F money.F is silver.N‘Money is silver.’

b. I sevta-s en pola tranon.the.F love.F-your is very big.N‘Your love is very big.’ (Anastasiadis 1995: 86)

That the œlwtva versus ¥wtva distinction was active in Cappado-cian as it is in Pontic can be evidenced by the situation inCappadocian varieties that have preserved it, even to a limitedextent, along with an equally limited distinction based on gram-matical gender (for a discussion of animacy in Cappadocian, seeJanse 2004). One such variety is Axo Cappadocian (AC)(Mavrochalyvidis & Kesisoglou 1960). In AC, [+HUMAN] masculinenouns do not take any form of the definite article either in thesingular or in the plural. [–HUMAN] masculine nouns combine withthe neuter form of the definite article in both numbers. Femininenouns combine with a contracted form of the definite article t in thesingular and with the neuter form of the definite article, irrespectiveof their [±HUMAN] specification. In AC nominal inflection, thefollowing distinctions are therefore operative:

16Masculine nouns and adjectives ending in -os change the nominative singularending to -on when preceded by the definite article (Drettas 1997: 120; Oikonomidis1958: 183).


(22) ACa. Singular

[+HUMAN] masculine Ø arxopos ‘the man’feminine t neka ‘the woman’[-HUMAN] masculine ⁄ to jipnos ‘the sleep’neuter to zevcli ‘the yoke’

b. Plural[+HUMAN] masculine Ø arxop(i) ‘the men’all other ta jipnosja ‘the sleeps’

ta nekes ‘the women’ta karjes ‘the hearts’ta zevclja ‘the yokes’

(Mavrochalyvidis & Kesisoglou 1960: 40–41)

Grammatical gender distinctions are neutralised in adjectivalconstructions and in predicate–agreement structures. Adjectives inAC have lost gender distinctions, and appear in the originallyneuter form when modifying head nouns irrespective of theirgrammatical gender or [±HUMAN] feature, as in UC (23):

(23) ACto kalo arxopos ‘the good man’to kalo neka ‘the good woman’to kalon to pei ‘the good child’

ta kala arxop ‘the good men’ta kalan ta nekes ‘the good women’ta kalan ta pedja ‘the good children’


The final -n in kalon and kalan is conditioned by the samemorphophonological rule already encountered in UC. What callsfor special attention in the AC case is the environments wheredefiniteness spreading appears. As seen above, in UC and Pontic,definiteness spreading is obligatory in all environments. In AC,though, definiteness spreading is possible only when the forms ofthe two definite articles – the one agreeing with the head noun andthe one agreeing with the modifying adjective – are identical, i.e. ofneuter gender in form (Mavrochalyvidis & Kesisoglou 1960: 31)(24):


(24) ACa. to kalon to pei ‘the good child’

ta kalan ta nekes ‘the good women’ta kalan ta pedja ‘the good children’

b. *to kalon t neka ‘the good woman’*to kalon ton arxopo ‘the good man.ACC’*ta kalan t arxopjus ‘the good men.ACC’


In light of the AC data, a language-internal hypothesis can beformulated according to which the mismatch between the forms ofthe definite articles of the modifying adjective and the head nounin constructions such as the ones found in Pontic, but also even insome Cappadocian varieties (cf. Sinasos Cappadocian (16)), wasdisallowed in the most innovative Cappadocian varieties such asAC and UC.17 This triggered a series of analogical levellings basedon the forms of the definite articles and the modifying adjectivesin adjectival constructions which in turn eventually led to the totalloss of grammatical gender in the Cappadocian varieties like UC.Such a hypothesis would take the Pontic data as illustrating anearlier stage and the UC data as representing a later stage in the

17As one anonymous reviewer correctly points out, the data from SinasosCappadocian in (16) seem to challenge the claim that the mismatch between theforms of the definite articles of the modifying adjective and the head noun inpolydefinite constructions was disallowed in the most innovative Cappadocianvarieties, as the specific variety supposedly preserves the mismatch when most othervarieties appear to have lost it. Dawkins comments on Sarantidis’ description ofSinasos Cappadocian as being ‘professedly of a past state of things’ (1916: 27; seealso quote from Dawkins above, section 4.2.2) and considers it similar to PotamiaCappadocian, which does not exhibit the sort of mismatch described above.However, even if one does not wish to discard this example on the basis of Dawkins’remarks, thus considering it as truly depicting the synchronic state of the variety atthe time of its documentation in 1899, it could well be the case that SinasosCappadocian was one of the least innovative Cappadocian varieties with respect tothe loss of grammatical gender and never underwent this change characteristic ofother Cappadocian varieties. The Sinasos data, then, could be thought of asillustrating an earlier stage in the whole process of language change.


decline of grammatical-gender distinctions in the Eastern Greekdialects and could be illustrated in the following stages ofanalogical levelling:18

Stage 1 Nouns are marked for grammatical gender and the[±HUMAN] feature. Determiners of [+HUMAN] nouns,their modifiers and determiners of modifiers agree withtheir heads in grammatical gender in both numbers.Determiners of [–HUMAN] nouns agree with their heads ingrammatical gender in the singular; in the plural, theytake neuter agreement. Modifiers of [–HUMAN] nounsand their determiners take neuter agreement in bothnumbers. Definiteness spreading is obligatory with allnouns.

a. [+HUMAN] (cf. Pontic (18)–(20))o kalos o andras ‘the good man’i kalesa i jineka ‘the good woman’

i kali i andres ‘the good men’i kaleses i jinekes ‘the good women’

b. [–HUMAN]to kalon o minas ‘the good month’to kalon i kosara ‘the good chicken’


Change 1 The mismatch between the forms of the definitearticle appearing before the adjective and thatappearing before the head noun in the singular of[–HUMAN] nouns is levelled.

18The series of changes postulated by the language-internal hypothesis formulatedhere are illustrated on the basis the Pontic data in (18) and (20). The nouns andras‘man’ and jineka ‘woman’ are taken as examples of [+HUMAN] nouns and the nounsminas ‘month’ and kosara ‘chicken’ are taken as examples of [–HUMAN] nouns ofmasculine and feminine gender respectively. Dialectal variation (e.g. in UC thedefinite article appears as do ⁄ da) and phonological differences (e.g. the final -ninsertion rule) are not taken into consideration.


Stage 2 Nouns are marked for grammatical gender and the[±HUMAN] feature. Determiners of [+HUMAN] nouns,their modifiers and determiners of modifiers agree withtheir heads in grammatical gender in both numbers.Determiners of [–HUMAN] nouns, their modifiers anddeterminers of modifiers take neuter agreement in bothnumbers. Definiteness spreading is obligatory with allnouns. Mismatch between the forms of the definitearticle in definiteness spreading is disallowed.

a. [+HUMAN]o kalos o andras ‘the good man’i kalesa i jineka ‘the good woman’

i kali i andres ‘the good men’i kaleses i jinekes ‘the good women’

b. [–HUMAN]to kalon to minas ‘thegoodmonth’ (cf.AC(20)–(22))to kalon to kosara ‘the good chicken’


Change 2 The contrast between grammatical gender and the[±HUMAN] feature is levelled in the modifiers. Neuteragreement in the modifiers is introduced for [+HUMAN]nouns.

Stage 3 Determiners of [+HUMAN] nouns agree with theirheads in grammatical gender. Determiners of[–HUMAN] nouns, and modifiers and determiners ofmodifiers of all nouns take neuter agreement. Defi-niteness spreading is obligatory with all nouns.Mismatch between the forms of the definite article indefiniteness spreading is disallowed and thepre-nominal article then disappears in such cases.

a. [+HUMAN]to kalon andras ‘the good man’ (cf. AC (20)–(22))to kalon jineka the good woman’

ta kala andres ‘the good men’ta kala jinekes ‘the good women’


b. [–HUMAN]to kalon to minas ‘the good month’to kalon to kosara ‘the good chicken’


Change 3 Neuter agreement in the modifiers andtheir determiners with all nouns leads tothe loss of grammatical gender. All nounsbehave as neuters.

Stage 4 Nouns have no grammatical gender. Determiners of allnouns, their modifiers and determiners of modifiers all takeneuter agreement in both numbers. Definiteness spreadingis obligatory with all nouns. No mismatch surfacesbetween the forms of the definite article in definitenessspreading.

a. [+HUMAN]to kalon to andras ‘the good man’ (cf. UC (1))to kalon to jineka ‘the good woman’

ta kala ta andres ‘the good men’ta kala ta jinekes ‘the good women’

b. [–HUMAN]to kalon to minas ‘the good month’to kalon to kosara ‘the good chicken’


4.2.3. Summary

The origins of grammatical-gender loss in Cappadocian can betraced back to the emergence of a [±HUMAN] feature which becameactive in the nominal inflection of Eastern Greek dialects. Thisfeature was realised, among others, in agreement between headnouns and modifiers within the noun phrase domain and beyond it,in predicate–argument constructions, in that the modifiers andother agreeing nominals referring to [–HUMAN] nouns appeared intheir neuter form. This, in combination with definiteness spreading,


which was obligatory in these dialects, resulted in a mismatchbetween the form of the definite article appearing before theadjective and those appearing before the head noun in polydefiniteconstructions, as the definite article appeared in the neuter formbefore the adjective but in the masculine or feminine form beforethe head noun. While this mismatch was allowed in Pontic, this wasnot the case in Cappadocian, where the mismatch was levelled atthe expense of grammatical-gender distinctions. These processes ofanalogical levelling were probably aided and accelerated byCappadocian–Turkish bilingualism and subsequent cross-linguisticinfluence from Turkish. The linguistic aspect that turned out to bethe key in accounting for this change is agreement, especially withinthe noun-phrase domain. The series of analogical levellingsprogressed on the basis of [determiner ⁄modifier + head noun]agreement, whereas the cues for the absence of gender distinctionsin Turkish in the case of the cross-linguistic influence in bilingualsundoubtedly came from the invariability of determiners andmodifiers, i.e. the absence of agreement within the noun phrase inthe language.

5. IS THIS THE END OF THE STORY?

The aim of this paper has been to identify the most salient linguisticfactors in the process of grammatical-gender loss in Cappadocianvarieties such as UC and to elaborate on one of them, namely therole of adjective–noun agreement in polydefinite constructions. Inline with most current approaches to cases of language change, ithas been argued that a combination of language-internal andlanguage-external factors contributes to a more complete picture ofthe language change case in question.

In an attempt to assess the validity of the language-internal andlanguage-external factors that have been discussed here, it becomesclear that each of them allows us to account for different aspects ofthe Cappadocian data. Language-internal factors provide anenlightening overview of the processes and changes which wereunder way in the Eastern Greek dialects and which most probablypre-date the Turkish invasions in Asia Minor and subsequentlanguage contacts between some of these dialects and Turkish. Themost important of these features is neuter agreement with nouns ofeither masculine or feminine gender which is found, for example, in


Pontic. This is an important indicator of the situation that mostprobably preceded the complete loss of grammatical-genderdistinctions in some Cappadocian varieties like UC, and alsoaccounts for the retention of number agreement in [deter-miner ⁄modifier + head noun] constructions – something whichcontact-related explanations were unable to deal with.Language-external factors, in contrast, help explain why the

process of grammatical gender loss was completed in someCappadocian varieties but not in other Eastern Greek dialects likePontic, despite the fact that the structural conditions for the changeare found in them as well. In the case of Pontic, recall that languagecontact between Cappadocian and Turkish was far more intenseand long-standing than language contact between Pontic andTurkish. This resulted in extensive bilingualism in some Cappado-cian villages. This contact-related dimension of the change isfurther corroborated by the use of the neuter as the default gendervalue in SMG–Turkish bilingual speech.Overall, the examination of the language-internal and language-

external factors that have been proposed for the explanation ofgrammatical-gender loss in Cappadocian varieties such as UCcorroborates Dawkins’ claim that ‘the Turkish influence foundalready existing a loss of grammatical gender or at least a tendencyto lose grammatical gender, and carried this further to its ownconditions of total absence of any distinctions of gender’ (1916:116).Of course, in order to elucidate the role of the [±HUMAN] feature

and its realisations in Cappadocian, further research is requiredwhich will draw from data from more Cappadocian as well as otherEastern Greek varieties and will examine the issue from a widerperspective. One relevant aspect is the interaction of this featurewith nominal inflection. Spyropoulos and Kakarikos (2007) showthat the feature conditions the inflectional pattern of some nounsand the distribution of certain inflectional endings in Delmeso, Axoand Ulaghatsh Cappadocian. In an example from DelmesoCappadocian, nouns of Greek origin ending in -as take differentinflectional endings in the plural depending on their [±HUMAN]specification (25):


(25) Delmeso Cappadocian[+HUMAN] [–HUMAN]

SINGULAR papa-s ‘priest’ kerata-s ‘snail’PLURAL papað-es keratað-ja

(Dawkins 1916: 109–10)

According to their analysis, the -ja inflectional ending is specified as[–HUMAN], whereas -es is the default plural formative in this variety,as it appears with both [+HUMAN] and [–HUMAN] nouns in otherinflectional classes.

Such an interaction could also possibly contribute to grammaticalgender loss in Cappadocian. In another example from Spyropoulosand Kakarikos, in UC, nouns ending in -os follow two differentinflectional patterns based on their [±HUMAN] specification (26):

(26) UC[+HUMAN] [–HUMAN]‘man’ ‘wolf’

SINGULAR

Nominative ⁄Accusative xerif-os likos-ØGenitive xerif-ju likos-juPLURAL

Nominative ⁄Accusative xerif-ja likos-ja(Dawkins 1916: 102)

According to Spyropoulos and Kakarikos’s analysis, [+HUMAN]nouns follow a synthetic (i.e. fusional) inflectional pattern, whereas[–HUMAN] nouns follow an agglutinative inflectional pattern. Irre-spective of the exact nature of the inflectional patterns in (26), inUC, the -ja inflectional ending also appears with [+HUMAN] nouns,unlike in Delmeso Cappadocian, where it only appears with[–HUMAN] nouns. It therefore needs to be examined whether thecombination of an inflectional ending which is specified as [–HUMAN]in one Cappadocian variety with [+HUMAN] nouns in anotherCappadocian variety could have been a factor operative ingrammatical gender loss.19

19That there can be a relation between inflectional patterning and gender is pointedout by Corbett (1991) in general, and by Ralli (2002) in particular for SMG.


It would also be of great interest to investigate the conditionsunder which the [±HUMAN] feature emerged in Eastern Greekdialects. Horrocks suggests that this process

was perhaps initiated by the local transfer in antiquity ofunusually large numbers of masculine and feminine inanimatesof the third declension to the neuter paradigm in -…m [-in], andsubsequently accelerated by expanded use of neuter possessiveadjectives, first with other inanimates regardless of gender, thenmore generally, a development perhaps prompted by thegender-invariant form of the corresponding genitive pronom-inal possessives: e.g. temon ⁄ temeteron i nıfe ‘the-my ⁄our thedaughter-in-law’. (1997: 314)

The creation of subgenders based on features such as animacy orthe [±HUMAN] feature is also reported for more or less all Slavoniclanguages. In Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian, for example, masculinenouns are further divided into animates and inanimates, a distinc-tion realised in terms of inflectional endings and agreement withvarious determiners (ovog studenta ‘this.M student.M’ versus ovajzakon ‘this.M law.M’; Corbett 1991: 162).Finally, an issue not touched upon in the present paper concerns

the invariability of modifiers for case in adjectival constructions ofthe polydefinite type. In Cappadocian, modifying adjectives do notagree with their head nouns in case, but remain invariable withrespect to case across the inflectional paradigm. As also shownabove, they only agree with their head nouns in terms ofnumber (27):

(27) AC‘the good man’SINGULAR

Nominative to kalo arxoposGenitive t kalo arxop(u)Accusative to kalo arxopoPLURAL

Nominative ta kala arxop(i)Genitive t kala arxoposjuAccusative ta kala arxopjus

(Mavrochalyvidis & Kesisoglou 1960: 43)


The invariability for case is reminiscent of Turkish, where modi-fying adjectives remain invariable for case across the inflectionalparadigm as well. Whether the invariability in Cappadocian can beattributed to cross-linguistic influence from Turkish is anotheraspect that needs to be investigated.

Department of LinguisticsFaculty of Modern and Medieval LanguagesUniversity of CambridgeSidgwick AvenueCambridge CB3 9DAUnited KingdomEmail: [email protected]

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grammacical gender in cappadocian greek-

Education

good man

good women

smg forms

good children kesisoglou

neuter forms

good woman ton kalon

uc kalon

dierent forms