Mišótika Cappadocian in contact : the consequences of linguistic change on the variety’s vowel system
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Date
2025-05-27
Authors
Βασσάλου, Νικολέτα
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Abstract
The present research investigates the vowel system of contemporary Mišótika, which is a variety of Cappadocian Greek. It is an acoustic analysis of vowels based on recordings of 30 native speakers (male and female) who live in three different (i.e., according to their community structure) Cappadocian communities in Greece. The study aims to present the linguistic changes that the vowel system of Mišótika has undergone since the forced migration of the Cappadocians under the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923-24, due to dialect contact and negative language attitudes of the locals against Cappadocian newcomers. A second goal is to analyze the distribution of the vowels in the vowel space and indicate how the vowel system diverges from the older system attested a century ago, taking into account the impact of the different contact conditions in each community as well as gender.
The findings of the research bring to light new data on the vowel system of one of the surviving dialects of Cappadocian Greek. Before the population exchange, the vowel system was identical with the Turkish, consisting of the five inherited Greek vowels [a, e, i, o, u] and the three Turkish vowels [y, œ, ɯ]. The study indicates that the current vowel systems of the speakers from three Cappadocian communities in Greece diverge significantly from the older system. More specifically, due to contact with Standard Modern Greek and local varieties, the Turkish vowels are in different stages of reduction and possible loss in the speech of 2nd generation speakers. Remarkably, the analysis of the speech of three Cappadocian communities provides evidence for the existence of a previously unrecorded vowel [æ], which has appeared in the vowel system of Mišótika in words of both Greek and Turkish origin.
Furthermore, there is evidence that there are differences between the three Cappadocian speech communities, where community structure (homogeneous vs. mixed) and gender roles seem to be significant sociolinguistic parameters influencing the distribution of the vowels in the vowel spectrum. The analysis shows that the current vowel system of the inhabitants of the three different villages diverges from the older one described a century ago. Moreover, there are significant differences between the three Cappadocian communities, which are the result of dialect contact under different sociolinguistic conditions. At the same time, gender also seems to be a significant sociolinguistic parameter, as male speakers are one step ahead in the process of linguistic change in comparison with the women.
The current thesis sheds light on the dynamics of language variation and change in contact situations. It is the first to focus on the contact of a Cappadocian variety with varieties of Greek in Greece instead of contact with Turkish in Asia Minor, and finally it is an important contribution to the documentation of one of the last the Cappadocian dialects as it relied on recordings of spontaneous speech.
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Keywords
Mišótika, Cappadocian dialect, Vowel system, Linguistic change, Dialect contact, Gender