High and Low Arguments in Northern and Pontic Greek

Abstract

This paper deals 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.

Keywords

• syntax
• indirect object marking
• Modern Greek dialects