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In this paper I give an overview of several syntactic and morpho-syntactic phenomena applying to a range of Modern Greek dialects. I present a descriptive account of these phenomena, and refer to some possible theoretical analyses put forward by a number of well-known linguists. In certain cases, I offer evidence for the cross-dialectal occurrence of a phenomenon as a contribution to the establishment of syntactic isoglosses, and report some hints of its diachronic development when the available sources permit. My data are drawn not only from written sources, but also from the oral material that has been collected in the last six years from several Greek areas, and stored in the Modern Greek Dialects Laboratory (MGDL) of the University of Patras. The paper has the following structure: Section 1 contains some general observations with respect to the study and development of Modern Greek dialects. Dialectal word order is presented next (Section 2), followed by certain observations on the use of complementizers (Section 3), negation (Section 4), and sentential particles (Section 5). The issues of infinitival forms and periphrastic tenses (perfect and future) are examined in Section 6, while elements appearing in wh-questions constitute the topic of Section 7. The case form of the indirect object is tackled next (Section 8), and the paper ends with the well-described topic of verbal clitics, which is presented in Section 9. The paper concludes with remarks stressing the importance of research in the field of Modern Greek dialectology.

This introduction lays out the issues in the study of morphosyntactic variation in Modern Greek dialects and summarizes the contents of the papers included herein.

Cypriot Greek has been cited as “the last surviving Modern Greek dialect” (Contossopoulos 1969:92, 2000:21), and differences between it and Standard Modern Greek are often seen as seriously disruptive of communication by Mainland and Cypriot Greeks alike. This paper attempts an anatomy of the linguistic ‘difference’ of the Cypriot variety of Greek. By placing this in the wider context of the history of Cypriot Greek, the study and current state of other Modern Greek dialects, and state and national ideology in the two countries, Greece and Cyprus, it is possible to identify both diachronic and synchronic, as well as structural and ideological factors as constitutive of this difference.

Although there are many works on individual Modern Greek dialects, there are very few overall descriptions, classifications, or cartographical representations of Greek dialects available in the literature. This paper discusses some possible reasons for these lacunae, having to do with dialect methodology, and Greek history and geography. It then moves on to employ the work of Kontossopoulos and Newton in an attempt to arrive at a more detailed classification of Greek dialects than has hitherto been attempted, using a small number of phonological criteria, and to provide a map, based on this classification, of the overall geographical configuration of Greek dialects.