Turkish

[David L. White]

>> How many languages were spoken on the Central Plateau in, say, AD 1900?

> The chief differences from today would have been a sizeable number of
> Armenian-speakers, most of them massacred a few years later, and a
> large number of Greek-speakers along the Aegean coast, almost all
> of them expelled after the Greco-Turkish war.  So far as I know,
> the central plateau would not have been very different linguistically.

        Dawkins(1916) is a study (mainly) of Cappadocian Greek, which was
presumably still spoken when he was studying it.  (I have it only
second-hand, though it is on my too-long list of things to read.  But my
impression has always been his study was first-hand.)  Cappadocia is in
central Anatolia, more or less.
        Cappadocian Greek brings up many interesting issues in language
transfer that are perhaps too off-subject to be worth going into.


>> To what extent did replacement spread through Turkish controlled lands
>> beyond Anatolia, depending on what you mean by Anatolia?

> Not very greatly, as far as I know, but then I was only talking
> about Anatolia.

        It's dominant in European Turkey, not surprisingly, and occurs in
various islands in Bulgaria, esp. in the northeast.  The Bulgarian perfect
has apparently been remodeled as an inferentional through Turkish influence.
(Because in many cases something like "It has snowed" is easily reconstrued
(by a Turk anyway) as "Evidently it has snowed", "I infer it has snowed", or
something of the sort.)  This is, I think, difficult to explain if Turkish
was not at one time more common in Bulgaria than it has been more recently.

                                                            Dr. David L. White

Message-ID: <000c01c05173$1aab59a0$366263d1 at texas.net>
References: <Pine.OSF.4.30.0011151035340.24296-100000 at vesuri.Helsinki.FI>
Subject: Dawkins Reference
Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2000 09:20:35 -0600

    Sorry.  I meant to inclue this but forgot.  It is:

Dawkins, R. M. 1916.  "Modern Greek in Asia Minor ..."  Cambridge:
University Press.

                                                        Dr. David L. White