Understanding Dialectal Variation in Contact Scenarios Through Dialectometry: Insights from Inner Asia Minor Greek

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

See attachment.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please refer to the attached file for a detailed response to your comments. We have addressed each point thoroughly and made revisions accordingly. Thank you for your valuable feedback.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

First, I must start by profusely apologizing to the editors and especially to the authors for taking so long to produce this report; it is no reflection on the paper itself but only a function of my taking on too many professional obligations (reviewing, writing, evaluating, etc.) that all came due within roughly the same time-frame (and, I guess, poor time management on my part).

 

Second, and perhaps most important, this is a highly quantitative and methodologically computational study and I am a highly qualitative sort with an aversion of sorts to papers that are too mathematical and too computational in their orientation (and by “aversion” I do not mean an automatically negative viewpoint but rather a difficulty in reading and understanding, leading to avoidance).  However, I do know something about Greek, about language contact, and about language change, so my comments are focused on those aspects of the paper.

 

I did find the methodology interesting, even if the details of how the models were devised were beyond my grasp, and I found the results and conclusions to be of some interest, even if in some instances not somewhat unexpected given the presentation of the Greek-related and contact/change-related parts.  So my overall assessment of the paper is positive. Even with my limited understanding of the methodology, it is evident that a lot of thought and care and work went on the part of the author(s) went into this paper and that deserves a positive recognition.

 

Consequently, I judge the paper to be acceptable, subject to revisions in the parts that I felt competent to comment on.  My official “verdict” is “accept after indicated revisions are made”.

 

I offer my comments about the needed revisions in what follows, commenting only on the areas where I have some expertise (thus the gap in comments between p. 12 and p. 26):

 

• p. 1, in the abstract, l. 15-16:  I take exception to the statement “given their association with intense contact required for grammatical change”.  I realize that this study is aimed at contact-induced change, but the wording here seems to imply that grammatical change *only* happens under conditions of “intense contact”, which is certainly not so. Although this is not the concern of the author(s) in this study, grammatical change due to system-internal pressures and developments is definitely possible and is definitely instantiated in numerous cases in the historical development of various languages.  Perhaps all that is needed here is just some tweaking of the wording here but something is most assuredly off here in this statement.

 

• p. 1, in the abstract, l. 16-17: the statement “lexical variation, being less dependent on contact compared to structural borrowing” is problematic. I first thought it was a typo for “… compared to structural change” but the same wording recurs in the text itself. What is off here is that by definition, structural borrowing is dependent on contact because borrowing does not happen system-internally:  it necessarily needs the impetus of external pressure (it is “borrowing”, after all!).  I think (or perhaps hope) that what was meant here is that within the context of a contact situation, lexical change can occur under conditions of casual contact whereas structural change requires more intense contact (this is a point Thomason and Kaufman make).

 

• p. 1, in the abstract, l. 16:  I don’t like the apparent equating of “variation” with “change”, e.g. in the mention of “lexical variation”.  Of course, variation within a speech community leads to change, but the sense that seems to be at play in this study is rather a static relationship between two different speech communities that each have a different value for a given “variable” (e.g. the word for ‘X’ or the 1^st person plural present ending, or the like). That is, I don’t think that the intent of the author(s) is variation within a single speech community.  Again, this may be a matter of wording, but the problematic wording in the abstract to me signals a less than clear grasp of just what is involved in language change.  I readily admit, of course, that the exact characterization of “change” is a matter of some debate, with some linguists saying that the entry alone into a speech community of something innovative (whether prompted by borrowing or by internal factors) is a change and others saying that only when that innovative something is generalized (i.e. adopted) across a swath of a speech community can we talk about change). Perhaps some clarification is needed on the part of the author(s) as to what they mean when they talk about “variation” and “change”.

 

• p. 2, l. 60:  regarding the claim that “social variables are unlikely to have a greater impact”, in my experience, social factors can trump other variables (especially purely linguistic ones, and that is really one of the key points that Thomason & Kaufman make.

 

• p. 2, l. 61:  please provide a definition of the “Fundamental Dialectological Postulate”, perhaps in a footnote.

 

• p. 2, l. 67: regarding mention of “the type of language variety”, this is rather opaque terminology; it is more or less mentioned in the abstract (l. 14-15) and elsewhere (e.g. §2.5.4) as “variety type”, where it is equated with the degree of contact, but that sense is not at all evident (I realize this may be taken from Kortmann or Bompolas  & Melissaropoulou, but some explication of the terminology would be helpful to the reader, perhaps even in a footnote).

 

p. 2, l. 70: regarding “multilingual speaker groups interact within a single geographical area”, that is certainly the norm, isn’t it?  It is presented here as if it is a special case.  Admittedly, sometimes there are social factors that militate against interaction of two groups in the same space, as with the generally socially marginal Roms in the Balkans (who have to learn the ambient dominant language but those speakers do not learn Romani), and there can also be a more learnèd “interaction” (though not actual speaker-to-speaker engagement  through textual transmission or (now) through popular media (music, films, etc.)

 

• p. 2, l. 78:  how does language contact intensity play a “nuanced role”?  Thomason & Kaufman give it rather a central, key role, so what is “nuanced” about it?

 

• p. 2, l. 78:  I am not sure I understand what is meant here by “broader borrowing”. It is not a technical term I am familiar with and I am not sure it covers what I seem to infer is meant by it (i.e. nonlexical borrowing).

 

• p. 2, l. 93:  regarding “a better predictor”, better than what?

 

• p. 2, l. 93-94: here we see the same wording (“less dependent on contact compared to structural borrowing”) that was in the abstract that I took exception to. Borrowing by definition, it seems to me, requires contact!

 

• p. 3, l. 103:  regarding Greek Orthodox communities being “native” to the Cappadocian plateau, it is certainly true that well, they were there before the Turks (but there were lots of language groups there before the Greeks (e.g. Anatolian Indo-Europeans, Hurrians, etc.), so “native” is not a very felicitous choice of words here.

 

• p. 4, l. 139ff.: for me at least, the catalog of features would be easier to read and take in if they were formatted as a list rather than in a paragraph. (There are fewer items mentioned in the first paragraph of p. 5, so that need not be put in list format, but it could be too.)

 

• p. 8, l. 305:  it would be helpful if it were spelled out just what kinds of “social meanings: are intended here (and in l. 318).

 

• p. 9, regarding mention “contact with / migration to Constantinople” in Table 2, I wonder about the utility and efficacy of this feature, as there was a sizeable Greek-speaking community in Constantinople (admittedly a different dialect from inner Asia Minor Greek  but a form of Greek nonetheless — what is this factor supposed to show? It would in principle have been possible for Greek visitors to Constantinople to have no real exposure to Turkish if they remained just within the bounds of the Greek community there.

 

• p. 9, regarding mention of “the standard language of the Greek state” in Table 2, this needs more discussion; it is not clear that a “standard [Greek] language of [a] Greek state” is a meaningful notion in the Ottoman era — my sense is that influence of “standard language of state” is more a 20th c. thing, though admittedly, a diglossic bifurcation between an archaizing high style and a more vernacular low style has always been a thing in the Greek context.

 

• p. 9, l. 370:  Regarding the directionality of influence between majority and minority languages, there can be minority language effects on the majority language, but what is said here is and probably noncontroversial; still, how do you measure likelihood here?

 

• p. 9, l. 375-6:  explain in a footnote about the population exchanges and the Treaty of Lausanne and related matters.

 

• p. 11, §2.5.6: see my comments above on p. 9.

 

• p. 12, l. 498:  please explain the acronym “PMI” (perhaps in a footnote).

 

• p. 26:  I think the editor attribution in the Wolfram 2017 bibliographic item may be erroneous.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Fine for the most part.

Author Response

Please find the attached file containing our detailed responses to your comments. We have carefully addressed each of your points and incorporated the necessary revisions into the manuscript. Thank you for your thoughtful feedback and constructive suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf