Morphosyntactic Variation and the role of Gender and Age: The case of the dialectal variety of Ano Syros Vasiliki Saloustrou & Dimitris Papazachariou Department of Philology, University of Patras Abstract In this paper we attempt to describe and interpret the linguistic and sociolinguistic behavior of a certain morphosyntactic variable of the dialectal variety of Ano Syros. In particular, we examine the accusative case marking for masculine plural nouns in –os [I(nflectional) C(lass) 1; Ralli 2005] in Noun Phrases (NP), which serve either as verb complements or adjuncts to Verbal Phrases (VP). Moreover, we endeavor to develop a scientific hypothesis about the outcome of language contact between the variety of Ano Syros and the SMG in reference to the variable under discussion as well as the role of gender and age in language contact. Keywords: linguistic variation, levelling, gender, age, change from above 1. Introduction This paper studies patterns of linguistic variation and change in the speech of three distinct age groups of both genders from Ano Syros. Specifically, we are concerned with a morphosyntactic variable of Ano Syros’ dialect (Southern Greek Variety; Kontosopoulos 2008), i.e. the case variable. The research has been held in Syros, where language contact has taken place throughout the 19th and during the first half of the 20th century. Since the 2nd half of the 19th century, Syros has been one of the most important commercial ports as well as the core of the transit trade in Eastern Mediterranean. In addition to this, Syros was one of the first industrial cities of Greece, with a great many industries flourishing in the 19th century. Apart from the continuous flow of population, Syros has hosted two big waves of immigrants: one wave of immigrants from Smyrna, Chios and from Psara after the outburst of the 1821 Greek War of Independence, and another from Crete and Turkey after the 1922 Asia Minor Catastrophe. Indeed, those newcomers contributed immensely in the rapid transformation of Syros into a flourishing urban city in the early decades of the 19th century. Moreover, their being in contact with the islanders and joining the existing social networks brought about several drastic changes on a cultural and linguistic basis. Nonetheless, after the two world wars and the 1944 Civil War, the flourishing economy of the island started to fade with all industries closing down. It was not before 1980, when Syros’ economy started to recover through the vehicle of tourism. Hermoupolis, though, as the capital of the Cyclades managed to retain its urban profile, and as a result the standard of living in Syros in the early ‘60s was considerably high. In Proceedings of PICGL4 246 | Vasiliki Saloustrou & Dimitris Papazachariou fact, all social and economic changes which followed the 1974 democratic national convention imparted bourgeois features to the local community (such as wealth, advanced education and upward mobility expectations), and therefore resulted in the creation of a middle class. Nowadays, the country’s financial instability has brought about severe repercussions on the island’s economy with high unemployment rates among the younger people, most of whom are seeking for employment opportunities in big city centers. 2. Data of the Study This study is held within a variationist framework and it is based on a corpus of 15 casual conversations recorded in self-selected dyads, for approximately 60 minutes. In terms of data collection, we followed ethnographic methods of data collection. To become more specific, the recordings were conducted by a trained member of the local community of Ano Syros, who leveraged her existing social ties within the community so as to approach and record her informants. Therefore, the informants had friendships both with one another and the fieldworker. It is also worth mentioning that the fieldworker adopted the participant observation technique as the major approach to the ethnographic research, avoiding energetic participation in the spontaneous, unstructured conversations. Our data emerged from the recordings of 30 native speakers sampling the local community along three different age groups and gender. Table 1 below illustrates the design of the sample. Younger (18-30) Middle (35-55) Older (60-85) Male Female Male Female Male Female 5 5 5 5 5 5 Table 1: Design of the fieldwork sample 2.1. Sample of the design 2.1.1. Age The participants in the survey have been allocated to three different age groups, each one of them being one generation older than the previous age group. These three generations are associated with different sociolinguistic and language contact conditions. More specifically, the older generation is the first generation after the establishment of immigrants from Asia Minor, after the Asia Minor Catastrophe. The middle generation was born in times of advanced urbanization and economic recovery, while the younger is brought up during Syros’ economic recession, a fact that necessitates their secession from the local community and identity. Morphosyntactic Variation and the role of Gender and Age | 247 2.1.2. Gender The term alludes to the male-female distinction as socially and discursively constructed (Cameron 1997; Eckert & McConnell-Ginet 2003; Holmes 2013d; Pavlidou 2006) in stark contrast to the biological difference, which is expressed through the term ‘sex’. In this study, however, each of the genders is considered unified, without further internal divisions. 3. Analysis 3.1. Qualitative Analysis Our qualitative analysis focuses on the accusative case marking for masculine plural nouns in –os (IC1) in Noun Phrases (NP), which serve either as verb complements or adjuncts to Verbal Phrases (VP). According to our hypothesis, the accusative case of these nouns is not indicated by a certain inflectional suffix in the dialectal variety of Ano Syros. That is, the inflectional suffix does mark only the nominal characteristic of the number (and that of the inflectional class), while that of the case is indicated by the article or the syntactic environment in case there is no article. (2) Sizitusame me tis palji naftiki ‘We were discussing with the old sailors’. In other words, there is no morphological distinction between the nominative and the accusative case, within the inflectional suffix of the noun, but a single form -that of the nominative case- corresponds to both morphosyntactic functions (syncretism). In other words, we witness a process of paradigmatic levelling between the two distinct morphological forms with the extension by analogy of the inflectional suffix of the nominative case (-i) to the accusative case of the masculine plural nouns under discussion (Karatzola, Ε. & Α. Fliatouras 2004; Ralli 2005; Trudgill 1986). A subsequent process that seems to be tied with the emergence of this phenomenon is a simplification (and reallocation) process with distinct features being denoted by different forms; the number is marked by the inflectional suffix while the case is denoted by the article (e.g. Milisa me tis fili mu ‘Ι had a conversation with my friends’). This 1:1 correspondence between the forms and the functions enhanced the transparency as well as the symmetry of the dialectal system (Trudgill, 1986: 88-126). A paradigmatic levelling process between the IC1 and the IC2 might also account for this phenomenon (Karatzola, Ε. & Α. Fliatouras 2004). And this presumption of ours is to be underpinned by the fact that in IC2, which includes almost all the other Greek masculine nouns (-as, -is, -es), there is no morphological distinction between the two cases in plural either (e.g. oi andres – tus andres ‘the men’). We are, therefore, inclined to extrapolate that IC1 masculine plural nouns might follow the salient tendency of all other masculine plural nouns to have the same morphological form for both the nominative and the accusative case. It would be an omission not to mention that 248 | Vasiliki Saloustrou & Dimitris Papazachariou syncretism applies also for both feminine and neuter nouns in both numbers (singular and plural) in Standard Modern Greek and the dialectal variety of Ano Syros. Today, in the linguistic community of Ano Syros, the masculine plural nouns under discussion are expressed either by the dialect form (-i) or the S(tandard) M(odern) G(reek) form (-us). These are the two variants of the morphosyntactic variable in question. (1) Ixe poli furni ‘There were many bakeries’. (2) Itan me tis ali pethameni ‘S/he was with the other dead people’. (3) Zografizi tixus ‘S/he is painting walls’. (4) Vrike enan ap’ tus filus tis ‘She found one of her friends’. 3.2. Quantitative Analysis In an attempt to investigate the potential influence of linguistic factors on the choice of a variant, we examined the following morphosyntactic categories, which can be associated with the case feature: i) the lexical category of the noun, ii) definiteness (i.e. definite/ indefinite noun), iii) animacy (i.e. animate/ inanimate noun), iv) abstract/ concrete noun, v) the semantic category of the verb, vi) the inflectional class of the noun, and vii) the origin of the noun (i.e. Greek word or loanword). We conducted T-tests for each of the aforementioned linguistic variables in order to figure out if the variation under scrutiny is due to linguistic factors. The results of our analysis, however, were not statistically significant, a fact that led us to assume that none of the above linguistic categories plays a role on the choice of a variant. It would be an omission, though, not to mention that all eight (8) abstract nouns were assigned the accusative case, which is the SMG form. Nonetheless, they were all found in utterances of middle-aged women, which underpins our assumption that even in the case of these nouns variation cannot be attributed to linguistic factors, but the social characteristics of the informants may determine the choice of a variant.