UNIVERSITY OF CRETE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOLOGY

The of the (western) Cretan Dialect A Phonetic and Phonological Analysis

The Cretan dialect, one of the most distinct regional Greek dialects, has been Administrative details examined by a very limited number of studies. Research concerned with the and phonology of the dialect is even more scarce and mainly Research Grant, ref. number 3493 impressionistic. The aim of this project is to provide, using acoustic analysis Funded by: UoC Research Committee techniques, a phonetic and phonological description of the consonants that occur in the dialectal variety spoken in western Crete. Grant period: February 2012 – February 2014 Budget: 15.000 € Project objectives PI: Ioanna Kappa, Assoc. Prof. of Linguistics • Record dialectal materials in conversational and read speech containing Postoctoral Fellow: Angelos Lengeris, PhD consonants in a variety of contexts.

• Describe the phonemic inventory of consonants and their allophones. Research assistants (MA Linguistics students): Nitsa Paracheraki, Konstadinos Sipitanos • List phonological phenomena that provide valuable information on phonological processes absent in Standard Modern Greek, such as

extreme palatalization and (af)frication of velar consonants and Technical support: George Motakis delateralization and retroflexion of /l/ before back .

• Document the dialect of Crete and assist its rescuing since it is an undeniable fact that some phonetic and phonological features that characterise the dialect are mainly retained by older speakers in the villages of Crete.

Contact • Disseminate our results in both academic and non-academic audiences with the goal of showing the richness of spoken Greek. Ioanna Kappa, email: [email protected] • Provide a baseline for further research on the phonetics and phonology of Angelos Lengeris, email: [email protected] the Cretan dialect (e.g. examination of eastern Cretan dialect, examination of vowels and intonation). Methods

• Recordings of conversational and read speech. Semi-directed interviews between 10 informants (5 female and 5 male) from different areas of the western Crete and a native speaker of the dialect.

• The dialectal material consists of individual words embedded in carrier sentences and conversational speech of approx. 20 minutes (e.g. stories, customs, and descriptions of a variety of topics).

• The collected data are phonetically annotated and prepared before proceeding to the phonetic and statistical analysis. Map of Crete showing our informants’ villages of origin (Episkopi, Anogia, Agios Georgios, Kouroutes, Asi • Speech analysis software is used in order to obtain quantity (duration) and Gonia) quality (energy density maximum, frication, spectral tilt and moments, formant transitions) measurements.

Examples of speech recordings • The phonetic analysis in combination with the statistical analysis provides the basis for the subsequent phonological analyses. Palatalization and affrication (velar softening) SMG w. Cretan Gloss

/ke/ and Research outcomes (as of February 2014)

/eˈki/ there Conference presentations Kappa, Ioanna. Instances of in the Cretan dialect. Oral /aftoˈkinita/ cars presentation at the 21st International Symposium on Theoretical & /ke/ and Applied Linguistics (ISTAL), April 2013, Thessaloniki. Kappa, Ioanna. Issues in the Language-Contact Phonology of the /θɾiˈnaki/ shovel Western Cretan Dialect. Oral presentation at Phonetics, phonology, languages in contact (PPLC 2013), 21-23 August, Paris. Kappa, Ioanna. Palatalization of the Epenthetic in the Delateralization and retroflexion of /l/ (western) Cretan Dialect: Regressive vs. Progressive Assimilation? Oral th /aˈla/ but presentation at the 11 International Conference of Greek Linguistics (ICGL), 26-29 September 2013, Rhodes. /baloˈθies/ gunfire Lengeris, Angelos & Ioanna Kappa. Extreme palatalization and (af)frication of velar consonants in the (western) Cretan dialect. Oral /laˈðaki/ oil presentation at the 21st International Symposium on Theoretical & Applied Linguistics (ISTAL), April 2013, Thessaloniki. /vɣalˈmeno/ taken out Lengeris, Angelos Ioanna Kappa, Nitsa Paracheraki & Konstadinos /kuˈluɾia/ bagels Sipitanos. On the Phonetics and Phonology of Retroflexion in the (western) Cretan Dialect. Oral presentation at the 11th International Conference of Greek Linguistics (ICGL), 26-29 September 2013, Rhodes. Retroflexion of /ɾ/ /paɾaˈtisi/ (to) abandon

Publications Kappa, Ioanna (submitted). Instances of vowel assimilation in the Cretan dialect. Selected Papers of the 21th International Symposium on Theoretical and Applied Linguistics. Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Kappa, Ioanna (submitted). Palatalization of the Epenthetic Consonant in the (western) Cretan Dialect: Regressive vs. Progressive Assimilation? Proceedings of the 11th International Conference of Greek Linguistics. Aegean University. Kappa, Ioanna (in preparation). Issues in the Language-Contact Phonology of the Western Cretan Dialect. Lengeris, Angelos and Ioanna Kappa (submitted). Palatalization and affrication of velar stops in the (western) Cretan dialect. Selected Papers of the 21th International Symposium on Theoretical and Applied Linguistics. Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Lengeris, A., Ioanna Kappa, Nitsa Paracheraki and Konstadinos Sipitanos (submitted). On the Phonetics and Phonology of Retroflexion in the (western) Cretan Dialect. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference of Greek Linguistics. Aegean University.