<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>

12th Novi Sad workshop on

**Psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic
and clinical linguistic research**

Book of abstracts

Novi Sad

April 12, 2025

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /></figure>
**Organizing committee:**

Sabina Halupka-Rešetar

Silvia Martínez Ferreiro

Srdjan Popov

Nina Ilić

**Programme committee:**

Sabina Halupka-Rešetar

Silvia Martínez Ferreiro

Christina Manouilidou

Dušica Filipović Đurđević

Seçkin Arslan

Claudia Peñaloza

Srdjan Popov

Mirjana Mirić

Ana Matić Škorić

Nina Ilić

**Editors:**

Sabina Halupka-Rešetar

Nina Ilić

**ISBN:**

978-86-6065-917-2

**URL**

https://digitalna ff.uns.ac.rs/sadrzaj/2025/978-86-6065-917-2

CIP - Каталогизација у публикацији
Библиотеке Матице српске, Нови Сад

81'23(048.3)

**NOVI Sad Workshop on Psycholinguistic, Neurolinguistic and Clinical Linguistic Research (12 ; 2025 ; Novi Sad)**

Book of abstracts [Elektronski izvor] / 12th Novi Sad Workshop on Psycholinguistic, Neurolinguistic and Clinical Linguistic Research, Novi Sad, April 12, 2025 ; [editors Sabina Halupka-Rešetar, Nina Ilić]. - Novi Sad : Filozofski fakultet, 2025

Dostupno i na: https://digitalna ff.uns.ac.rs/sadrzaj/2025/978-86-6065-917-2. - Opis zasnovan na stanju na dan 25.3.2025. - Bibliografija uz svaki apstrakt.

ISBN 978-86-6065-917-2

а) Психолингвистика -- Апстракти

COBISS.SR-ID 165636617
# Exploring contact-induced change in word order in Istanbul Greek

Philip Zakhariadis-Awadª, Sofia Prokouᵇ, Seçkin Arslanª

ªUniversité Côte d'Azur, BCL, CNRS, France

ᵇNational and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Department of Turkish and Modern Asian Studies, Greece

[philip.zakhariadis-awad@etu.univ-cotedazur.fr](mailto:philip.zakhariadis-awad@etu.univ-cotedazur.fr)

**Background:**

Istanbul Greek (IG) is a lesser-studied dialect where contact-induced structures have emerged, distinguishing it from Modern Standard Greek (MSG). This study investigates potential changes in word order in IG. Both Turkish and Greek exhibit considerable word order flexibility (see e.g., Georgiafentis & Lascaratou, 2013); however, they differ in their base word orders: Turkish follows SOV order (Erguvanli, 1984), while Standard Greek is typically considered to have SVO order (Dover, 1960; Alexiadou, 1999). The latter may have diachronically evolved from the ancient SOV order of Classical Greek (Lavidas, 2015). Tzanidaki (1995) analyzes spoken corpus data in MSG, showing that the SVO order dominated the corpus, while other word orders were less preferred (with all OV forms representing only 20%). With this in mind, we explored whether and to which extent speakers of IG have been influenced by the dominant use of the Turkish SOV structure.

**Methods:**

We recruited 21 native speakers of IG (15 females, mean age = 60.14, SD = 22.27). The participants were highly proficient in both Greek, their minority home language, and Turkish, the dominant societal language. We conducted an open-ended, semi-spontaneous speech production task, where participants were asked to describe their daily lives and childhood memories. The spoken samples were transcribed and analyzed. Additionally, we administered a spoken sentence listening experiment that included an end-of-trial acceptability judgment task, featuring six possible word orders in Greek using simple declarative sentences, see Table 1.
<table><caption>**Table 1.** Example stimulus sentences from the end-of-trial judgement task</caption><thead><tr><th>Condition</th><th>Stimulus</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>SVO</td><td>Ο γάιδαρος τρώει το μήλο.<br>DET·M donkey eat.PRES DET·N apple</td></tr><tr><td>SOV</td><td>Ο γάιδαρος το μήλο τρώει<br>DET·M donkey DET·N apple eat.PRES</td></tr><tr><td>VSO</td><td>Τρώει ο γάιδαρος το μήλο<br>Eat.PRES DET·M donkey DET·N apple</td></tr><tr><td>VOS</td><td>Τρώει το μήλο ο γάιδαρος<br>Eat.PRES DET·N apple DET·M donkey</td></tr><tr><td>OVS</td><td>Το μήλο το τρώει ο γάιδαρος<br>DET·N apple it eat.PRES DET·M donkey</td></tr><tr><td>OSV</td><td>Το μήλο ο γάιδαρος το τρώει<br>DET·N apple DET·M donkey it eat.PRES</td></tr><tr><td>Eng. Translation</td><td>[The donkey]<sub>SUBJ</sub> eats [the apple]<sub>OBJ</sub></td></tr></tbody></table>

**Results:**

The production data revealed that participants produced an average of 113.6 utterances, with 149.47 verbs on average, equating to approximately 1.3 verbs per utterance. The average counts of OV and VO structures were 27.2 and 39.27 respectively. This difference was statistically significant (t(16.669) = -3.3741, p = 0.003). We calculated the OV order ratio by dividing the total number of OV structures by the total number of VO forms. The OV ratio in our sample was 0.48 (SD = 0.37, ranging between 0.16 to 1.45). Even in a small sample of speakers this variability is remarkable, and only four speakers analyzed closely so far have shown OV structures within proximity to 20% reported in Tzanidaki (1995).

The sentence acceptance data showed that IG participants predictably preferred the SVO order over all other orders (all comparisons, β > 0.22, p > 0.04), see Figure 1. Model outputs revealed a preference for the VO order over OV (β = 2.04, SE = 0.27, t = 7.4, p < 0.001). Additionally, there was a significant effect of age (β = 0.03, SE = 0.01, t = 11.07, p < 0.001) and a significant interaction between order and age (β = -0.02, SE = 0.01, t = -4.28, p < 0.001), see Figure 2.

**Discussion:**

A conclusion that can be drawn from this study is that IG seems to have been included by the dominant Turkish OV order, as this is clearly visible in production. However, a monolingual comparison is still needed to determine whether these differences reflect a significant shift due to language contact. Furthermore, sociodemographic factors (e.g., gender, contact with mainland Greece, education) and linguistic backgrounds may further contribute to individual variation, widening the response range.
<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.** Sentence rating estimates across participants’ age.</figcaption></figure>

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## References

Alexiadou, A. (1999). On the properties of some Greek word order patterns. In *Studies in Greek syntax* (pp. 45-65). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

Dover, K. J. (1960/2011). *Greek word order*. Cambridge University Press.

Erguvanlı, E. E. (1984). *The function of word order in Turkish grammar*. University of California Press.

Georgiafentis, M., & Lascaratou, C. (2013). Words in order: Introduction. *Journal of Greek Linguistics*, *13*(2), 177-180.

Lavidas, N. (2015). How does a basic word order become ungrammatical? SOV from Classical to Koiné Greek. *Studies in Greek Linguistics*, *35*, 323-335.

Tzanidaki, D. I. (1995). Greek word order: towards a new approach. *UCL Working Paper in Linguistics*, *7*, 247-277.