FROM FUSION TO AGGLUTINATION: THE CASE OF ASIA MINOR GREEK* By ANTHI REVITHIADOU a ,VASSILIOS SPYROPOULOS b and GIORGOS MARKOPOULOS a a Aristotle University of Thessaloniki; b National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Received 15 March, 2015) ABSTRACT This article examines the nominal inflectional system of a group of Asia Minor Greek dialects (Dawkins 1910, 1916), which developed, in parallel with the fusional inflectional system, an agglutinative one due to language contact with Turkish. We argue that the ‘old’ fusional ending or the theme vowel was reanalyzed as part of the nominal stem. This novel structure was actualized by means of two competing options: in some dialects, the reanalysis was actualized transparently in all inflectional forms rendering an agglutinative pattern of inflection, whereas in dialects with limited agglutination the actualization took the form of a special type of vowel assimilation. More specifically, as part of the nominal stem, the ‘old’ theme vowel signals its merge with the root by allowing it to absorb some or all of its features. Formally, the phonological process is treated as an instance of INDIRECT LICENSING (Walker 2011), according to which the theme vowel acts as a trigger due to its privileged position as a segment of the categorizer n, i.e. the head of the stem. 1. GREEK IN ASIA MINOR The Greek varieties spoken by the indigenous Greek population of Asia Minor until the population exchange that took place after the Greek-Turkish war in the 1920s constitute a branch of Greek, known as Asia Minor Greek (Dawkins 1910, 1916 1 ). This branch includes dialects that have developed in isolated areas and independently from the rest of the Greek- speaking world since the Selc ßuk invasion in the late 11th century AD and mostly after the 15th century AD, i.e. during the Ottoman period (Anastassiadis 1976; Horrocks 2010; Karatsareas 2011; Janse in press). After the defeat of the Byzantine army in the battle of Manzikert in 1071 AD and the subsequent collapse of the Byzantine rule in Asia Minor, which was completed by the establishment of the Ottoman Empire in the mid 15th century, the Greek-speaking population of Asia Minor went into a gradual cultural transformation which resulted in their religious islamization and linguistic turkicization (see Tsalikoglou 1970; Vryonis 1971). * We wish to thank two anonymous reviewers and the TPHS editor James Clackson, as well as the participants of ICL19 (21–27 July, 2013, Geneva), ISTAL21 (5–7 April, 2013, Thessaloniki) and MFM21 (23–25 May, 2013), for their useful comments and suggestions, which greatly improved this paper. We also owe special thanks to Andrew Nevins for providing valuable feedback. The usual disclaimers apply. 1 The material described and analysed in Dawkins (1916) was gathered in the course of three journeys he made in several Asia Minor regions in the summers of 1909, 1910 and 1911. Dawkins collected texts and kept meticulous notes on all aspects of the local varieties grammar (phonology, morphology and syntax), many of which were supplemented with extended cross-dialectal comparative commentaries (Dawkins Archive, Taylor Institute, Oxford University). Transactions of the Philological Society Volume 00 (2016) 1–39 doi: 10.1111/1467-968X.12091 © The authors 2016. Transactions of the Philological Society © The Philological Society 2016. Published by John Wiley & Sons, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.