Abstract
This paper deals with issues of matter and pattern borrowing as applied to compound formations in four Asia Minor Greek varieties, Aivaliot, Cappadocian, Pharasiot and Pontic, which have been in contact with the typologically and genetically different Turkish. While Pharasiot has been impoverished of Greek-based compound structures due to an extensive Turkish influence, Aivaliot, Pontic, and to a lesser extent Cappadocian, show a wealth of items that are created on the basis of Greek patterns containing right-hand inflection, a compulsory compound-internal marker, and a combination of native and foreign constituents reanalyzed as stems. Assuming that Turkish compounds are phrasal, it is suggested that Greek compounding resists change, since the native compound morphology strongly constrains the adoption of a Turkish compound structure which is built in syntax. More specifically, it is proposed that in a contact situation, it is particularly difficult for a pattern to be transferred from one language to another if it presupposes changing of grammatical domain, that is, shifting from morphology (Greek compounding) to syntax (Turkish compounding). The article also discusses a number of formations in Pharasiot, where a N N phrasal compounding pattern seems to be selectively borrowed from Turkish. Refining the previous claim, it is further proposed that a transfer implying a passage from one grammatical domain to another could become possible in heavy contact situations if one basic condition is fulfilled: that the innovative pattern is allowed by the native properties of the recipient language. As a matter of fact, N N structures are not unknown in the Greek language, which has used them in specific contexts in several periods of its long history.
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Notes
In this article, the term Asia Minor Greek designates the Greek varieties spoken in the geographic area of Asia Minor. In the literature (see, among others, Karatsareas 2011; Revithiadou et al. 2016, etc.), the term often refers to Pontic, Cappadocian, Pharasiot and Silliot, following a tradition established by Dawkins’ (1916) seminal work. However, as demonstrated by a number of recent articles (see Koutsoukos and Pantelidis 2019; Markopoulos 2019; and Ralli 2019), some other varieties located in Asia Minor can be named as such, as for instance, Bithynian, Smyrniot and Aivaliot, since, on the one hand, they display a number of features which diverge from those of the Modern Greek dialects found in the Greek mainland and the islands, and, on the other hand, they share a considerable number of properties with Pontic and Cappadocian. In fact, Manolessou (2019) distinguishes the following groups of Asia Minor Greek dialects: the isolated inner Asia Minor ones (Pontic, Cappadocian, Pharasiot and Silliot), the varieties with continuous presence in Asia Minor since ancient times but in contact with neighboring mainland Greek ones (Bithynian), those with possible presence in Asia Minor since ancient times but strongly infused with immigration from the Aegean islands (Aivaliot, Smyrniot, Moschonisiot), and finally the varieties reaching Asia Minor from a specific area at a specific time (Livissiot, Propontis Tsakonian).
In this article, Greek designates Modern Greek, while the term Ancient Greek is reserved for the language spoken before the Hellenistic period (ca. third century BC–third century AD).
The Greek data will be presented in a broad phonological transcription. Stress and gender will be noted only when they are relevant to the argumentation, and the strings of constituents that do not participate in the compounding process will be included in parentheses. For reasons of clarity, the compound constituents are often divided by a hyphen.
See Ralli (2005) for the segmentation and analysis of the Greek inflectional endings.
is the feminine form of the adjective 
, agreeing for gender with ʝinéka, which is also a feminine noun.By convention, Greek nominal compounds are given in the nominative singular form and verbal ones in the first person singular of the present tense.
[s] surfaces only when the second constituent ends with a vowel, and /I/ is subject to vowel harmony, surfacing as [i]/[ɯ].
The examples (4)–(7) are drawn from Bağrıaçık et al. (2018).
In Aivaliot as well as in all Northern Greek dialectal varieties, unstressed /o/ is raised to [u], cf. Standard Modern Greek
‘horse’ and Aivaliot 
(Chatzidakis 1905–1907). However, vowel raising is also observed in some sub-varieties of Cappadocian as well as in Pharasiot, at the unstressed word final position.For the role of stem allomorphy in Greek inflection, see Ralli (2005).
Note that the existence of aʝéra parasi (or under the form of aéra parasi) is not exclusive to Aivaliot. It also occurs in Cypriot and in the Northern Greek dialect of the Greek Macedonian town of Serres. I owe to Io Manolessou this piece of information.
With the exception of Cappadocian and its parent Pharasiot and Silliot, where one-word compounds are not many, one-word compounds abound in all the other Asia Minor dialects. Note that the limited number of compounds is not a characteristic of inner AMG in general—inner AMG consisting of Cappadocian, Pharasiot, Silliot, and Pontic (Manolessou 2019)—since Pontic is also rich in compounds, as illustrated by the big number of occurrences found in Papadopoulos’ (1958) dictionary.
Many examples in this section are drawn from the work by Bağrıaçık et al. (2018).
In Standard Modern Greek, -u marks the genitive singular of masculine nouns in -os (e.g.
‘man’ 
‘man’s’) and that of neuter nouns in -i (e.g. spíti ‘house’, 
‘of the house’) and -o (vun-ó ‘mountain’, vun-ú ‘of the mountain’). In Pharasiot, -u appears in the genitive case of the singular number of masculine nouns in -os (e.g. 
‘rabbit’, 
‘of the rabbit’) and has been generalized to all neuter nouns.See also Sect. 3 and example (13) for a case of stem allomorphy containing the -ð- formative.
An anonymous reviewer asks why from all morphological markers available in Pharasiot, -u is the one that assumes the role of a compound marker. A tentative answer could be that Pharasiot compounds have borrowed the Turkish N N compound pattern, where the first noun is a possessive modifier of the second, and possession in Greek is marked with the genitive on the modifier.
As an anonymous reviewer has observed, this may be borrowing of the Turkish pattern without -sI.
See Andreou (2014) for the interplay of endogenous and exogenous factors applied to the creation of left-headed compounds in the Greko variety of Italiot Greek.
is the feminine form of the adjective 
, agreeing for gender with ʝinéka, which is also a feminine noun.
‘horse’ and Aivaliot 
(Chatzidakis 
‘man’ 
‘man’s’) and that of neuter nouns in -i (e.g. spíti ‘house’, 
‘of the house’) and -o (vun-ó ‘mountain’, vun-ú ‘of the mountain’). In Pharasiot, -u appears in the genitive case of the singular number of masculine nouns in -os (e.g. 
‘rabbit’, 
‘of the rabbit’) and has been generalized to all neuter nouns.References
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Acknowledgements
I sincerely thank Metin Bağrıaçık for allowing me to use the Pharasiot examples, drawn from his own corpus collected on site in a Greek Macedonian enclave of refugees from the Asia Minor Tsuchuri village. I also thank him for his assistance with the Turkish language and the fruitful discussions that we have held about Turkish compounding. I am particularly grateful to: Io Manolessou for her precious help regarding Ancient and Medieval Greek, Francesco Gardani for giving me the opportunity to present and publish this article, and the two anonymous reviewers whose comments made the article benefit greatly.
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Ralli, A. Matter versus pattern borrowing in compounding: Evidence from the Asia Minor Greek dialectal variety. Morphology 30, 423–446 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-020-09362-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-020-09362-6