[ 237 ] K ATHERINE HODGSON Morphological Evidence for the Origins of a Pontic Greek Community in Armenia Abstract The village of Madan (local name Mædǽn/Mætǽn, also known by the Russian name Lenrudniki) is situated near the town of Alaverdi in the province of Lori in Armenia, close to the border with Georgia. In the 1960s the population was approximately 3.000, but since then it has declined steadily, due largely to mi- gration to urban centres, falling below 700 in the 1980s. Since the 1990s most of the remaining inhabitants have settled in Greece, and now the village is vir- tually abandoned. It was apparently founded in the mid-18th century by Pontic Greeks who left the Ottoman Empire for what was then part of the kingdom of Georgia, albeit under efective Russian control, to work in the silver and cop- per mines, which continued to provide employment for the majority of the male population in the years of the Soviet Union. The population remained almost exclusively Greek, with a small number of Turkish families and also some Geor- gians, Armenians and Russians, mainly women married to local Greek men. However, mixed marriages were, at least until recently, not common, and gen- erally not encouraged. This research is based on 8 hours of sound recordings involving 12 speakers of Pontic Greek from Madan, who have emigrated to Greece in the last 15 years. Data from these recordings are compared with dialect texts from various parts of the Pontos in an attempt to identify characteristics which may help to place the dialect within the framework of the various Pontic sub-dialects, and thus perhaps identify the probable geographical origins of the inhabitants of this vil- lage. The use of these texts poses certain problems, such as the accuracy of the transcriptions and the possibility of contamination from other dialects, as the majority of them were narrated by speakers who had been resident in Greece for many years, where they are likely to have come into contact with speakers of other Pontic subdialects as well as Standard Modern Greek and local dialects. Another problem is the fact that data from some areas of the Pontos are extreme- ly limited or non-existent. Bearing in mind these limitations, we may nonetheless reach certain tentative conclusions, which are presented here. It is hoped that further research into the subdialects of Pontic Greek will help to create a clearer and more detailed picture.