Emergence of differential object marking in Asia Minor Greek

A computational approach to language change

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4567799
AutoresÜmit Atlamaz (0000-0003-1657-9654, Bogaziçi University, autor correspondente), Metin Bagriacik (0000-0003-4544-7503, Bogaziçi University)
Ano2025
Volume25
Fascículo2
Páginas225-268
Data de publicação2025-09-08
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoLinguistic Variation (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2211-6834 • E-ISSN: 2211-6842
EditoraJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/lv.23019.atl
OpenAlexW4397002695
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas40

This paper investigates the emergence of differential object marking (DOM) in the Asia Minor Greek dialect of Pharasa (PhG) under contact with Turkish. We show that DOM in Turkish and PhG are both instances of structural accusative case and DOM can be formally modeled as context sensitive dependent case. We propose that two factors caused the emergence of DOM in PhG, namely (i) case neutralization in indefinite contexts, and (ii) an increase in the number of V-NP idioms borrowed from Turkish where the NP is in bare form. These perturbations led to a significant change in the overall data created by the community resulting in mixed input for the younger generations. Once the amount of bare NPs passed a certain threshold, a divergent grammar became inevitable. We test our proposal using an abductive generalization learning algorithm based on the Tolerance Principle and running a number of simulations. Our simulation results confirm our hypothesis

Art · Geography · Humanities · Physics · Categorization, perception, and language · Computer Science · Linguistics and language evolution · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation · Artificial Intelligence