Syntactic Theories and Greek varieties. The case of demonstratives

In this paper I will analyze the syntactic behavior of demonstrative elements within the nominal domain (DP) in a number of ancient and contemporary Greek varieties.The syntax of demonstratives has not changed throughout the history of homeland Greek (at least since the Classical period, see Guardiano 2003), that is, the significant changes in the form-meaning relations attested across the diachronic development of the language (see Manolessou 2001) have not affected their syntactic properties/behavior. The picture is different in other contemporary varieties of the Mediterranean area. For instance, evidence from the Greek dialects of Southern Italy (i.e. Grico) shows that the settings of the four parameters are today identical to those of the local Romance varieties, and significantly different from those of homeland Greek. Needless to say, this is a consequence of the pervasive contact relations with the local Romance varieties across time, but it is not an isolated phenomenon: a more extensive analysis of other DP-elements shows that a distinct cluster of properties has changed in the same direction, that is that the corresponding parameters have been reset as a consequence of contact, while, on the other side, other properties (i.e. other parameters) have evolved in the same direction as in homeland Greek (and opposite to Romance): this could be, very tentatively, interpreted as a first sign that certain parameters are more sensible to contact (i.e. are more ‘areal’), while others happen to be more ‘historically rooted’ (i.e. ‘genealogical’ in the more traditional sense)