# Is Azov Greek a variety of Pontic? Preliminary remarks

Maxim L. Kisilier, Tanguy Sollicec

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Maxim L. Kisilier, Tanguy Sollicec. Is Azov Greek a variety of Pontic? Preliminary remarks. Greek Around the World: Papers from the 9 February 2024 Workshop, In press. hal-04921554

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Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
MAXIM L. KISILIER, TANGUY SOLLIEC*

# Is Azov Greek a variety of Pontic?
## Preliminary remarks

**Abstract**

Azov Greek and Pontic are varieties of Greek which have developed outside Greece and are generally not included into the classifications of Modern Greek dialects. Multiple parallels between Azov Greek and Pontic at various linguistic levels do not just indicate their possible close relationship but make even some scholars consider that Azov Greek belongs to the Pontic dialects. This claim is generally supported with the presence of analogous words and phrases, similar phonetic developments and resembling or related morphological forms and patterns. In this paper, we make the first attempt to overview both similarities and differences in vocabulary, phonetics/phonology, morphology/morphonology, syntax and morphosyntax. In order to process the results, we make use of a dialectometric approach based on the calculation of aggregate distances by the means of the Hamming distance. In our research, we use the data collected within the last few decades from the native speakers of Azov Greek from Maloyanisol' and Pontic from Yessentuki (Southern Russia). While calculating the Hamming distance, we also take into consideration the data from other Greek varieties, including Standard Modern Greek for comparison. As a result, we argue that Azov Greek and Pontic are very closely related varieties, probably, of the same origin.

**Keywords**

Azov Greek, Pontic, dialectometry, aggregate distance

# 1. Introductory notes

## 1.1 *Setting the problem*

The description of historical developments of any language is mostly based on written sources (either literary or epigraphic). So, if one makes an attempt to study the history of a linguistic variety without any written tradition, many conclusions, even those that might seem very logical and persuasive, will still remain hypothetical. In the case of Modern Greek linguistic varieties<fnref n="1" /> one can rarely find reliable

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /></figure>

<footnote>* Corresponding author: Maxim L. Kisilier, Saint Petersburg University, Institute for Linguistic Studies (Russian Academy of Sciences), m.kisilier@spbu.ru, http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7106-5261.</footnote>

<footnote>Tanguy Solliec, CNRS, Lacito, tanguy.solliec@gmail.com, http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9209-837X.</footnote>

<footnote>Open Access. © 2024 the author(s), published by the OSU Laboratory for the Study of the Greek Language.
[cc BY](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.</footnote>

<footnote n="1">¹ We intentionally avoid the term ‘dialect’ here because we would like to escape theoretical discussions about the differences between the language and the dialect (cf. Van Rooy 2020), or the dialect and the idiom (Kontosopoulos 2001: 2–3). We also realize that the term ‘Modern Greek varieties’ may seem problematic, since some varieties (e.g., Pontic, Cappadocian or Tsakonian) are rather varieties of Greek/Hellenic origin but not the varieties of Standard Modern Greek in the proper sense (cf. Joseph 2022). However, we decided to make use of this term in our chapter in order to demonstrate that we focus on the linguistic varieties of the modern times and not on the Ancient Greek dialects.</footnote>
data before the 19th century. The unique exception here (as in many other cases as well) is Tsakonian for which a wordlist from the second half of the 17th century was compiled by the famous Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi (see Costakis 1969: 45–46; Dankoff 1991: 133).

As for Azov Greek discussed in this chapter, documentation is much scarcer. We have to content to only a few historical facts. The speakers of Azov Greek came to the Azov Sea steppe in the late 1770s from Crimea together with Tatar-speaking Greeks Urums (*Urumlar*).<fnref n="2" /> Although this resettlement was extremely beneficial for the Russian Empire,<fnref n="3" /> the migration was not forced and it mostly involved the youngest members of the families who had no chance to inherit their fathers’ property in the Crimea. Together with their families, both Greek-speaking Rumejs and Tatar-speaking Urums brought Crimean toponyms to the Azov steppe, e.g., Yalta, Urzuf and Eski Qırım ‘Old Crimea’ later transformed into Staryi Krym with the same meaning in Russian. It is important to mention that Rumejs und Urums would never live in the same villages in Cis-Azov region, as it was already probably the case in the Crimea. However, some villages with Greek-speaking population display a Turkic component in their names like Staraya Karakuba where the second constituent originates from Turkic: *kara* ‘black’ and *kubbe* ‘dome, vault’. It happened because until the 1860s, Urum (a dialect of Crimean-Tatar) was used as the language for administration and trade. Consequently, most Greek-speaking Rumejs were bilingual. Some traces of this bilingualism can still be seen in Azov Greek, especially in the vocabulary. In the 1870s, Russian took the place of Urum as the language of administration. Its influence soon became evident on Azov Greek (Grigorovich 1874: 6) when nearly all male speakers were apt in Russian and even preferred to sing Russian songs (Braun 1890: 85).<fnref n="4" /> The history of Azov Greek in the 20th and 21st centuries had its ups and downs. Despite all difficulties and tragedies across these decades, this linguistic variety still exists and there is hope that it will still be spoken in the nearest feature.

The specific history of Azov Greek in the Crimea before the migration is more difficult to discuss, although there are some facts at our disposal:

<footnote n="2">² Ethnonym *Urum* is a Turkic/Tatar reinterpretation of the term 'Ρωμαΐος/Ro'meos/ — ‘citizen of the Byzantine empire'. The speakers of Azov Greek usually refer themselves as *Ruméjs* of the same origin while their language is generally called *Ruméjka* within the community. Other possible linguonyms are “Greek dialect of Mariupol”, “Mariupol[is] Greek”, Meotian Greek, Crimean Greek and Tauro-Rumeic. In Russian, or Ukrainian, the representatives of the local community may also call it *эллинский* [‘эλληνικός], i.e., ‘Greek’. In this chapter, we use the abbreviation *Rum.* for Azov Greek.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ Before this resettlement of Greeks from the Crimea, Tatars frequently roamed across the Azov steppe in order to attack the South Russia regions.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ The issue of language contact phenomena in Azov Greek is really thrilling and challenging. It has been thoroughly analyzed and discussed in Kisilier 2022a.</footnote>
1) Greek colonists came to the Crimea approximately in the 8th century BC. However, Azov Greek, as we demonstrate in §2, does not have so much specific Ancient Greek features, that we could directly connect it with the language of the first colonists.

2) According to Sokolov (1932: 313), the invasion of Mehmed II (1461) caused the mass resettlement of Trebizond Greeks to the Crimea.<fnref n="5" />

3) After the failure of Orlov revolt (1770), about 4.000 Peloponnesian Greeks left their homeland for the Crimea (Christou 2007: 41).

These facts unfortunately do not clarify when Azov Greek appeared and what were its precise origins. Definitely, it emerged as a separate linguistic variety after Antiquity. Günther Henrich (1998) thinks to have identified some traces of Azov Greek in the Letter of the Crimean Khan to the Republic of Genova (approx. 1470; cf. Christou 2007: 28). His claim is very tempting but the data he provides is too scarce to rely on. The analysis of the language of oral tradition is not helpful as well. We shall illustrate it with a short phrase from the Acritic song about Ioannis and the Dragon (1) which can be dated back to the period before the migration to Cis-Azov region.

1. as=páγo s manútsa=mu
let=I.go in mommy=my
'[I]'d better go to my mommy...' (Khadzhinov 1979)<fnref n="6" />

In Azov Greek, unstressed /e/ and /o/ are generally raised to /i/ and /u/ respectively (2a) while unstressed /i/ and /u/ disappear (2b).<fnref n="7" />

2. a. Rum. [p̈i'i̯ðu̯ts] ‘child’ vs. SMG<sup>8</sup> παιδί [pɛ̈δι]
Rum. [pu̯s'tevu] ‘[I] believe’ vs. SMG πιστεύω [pis'tevo]

b. Rum. ['sp̈i[t] 'home' vs. SMG σπίτι ['sp̈i[t]]
Rum. ['plú] 'bird' vs. SMG πουλί [pu'lı]

In (1), we find the untypical form *páγo* instead of the but not expected *páyu* as well as *mu* in place of *m*. These peculiarities cannot lead us to any conclusions because the language of folklore is a distinct

<footnote n="5">⁵ Sokolov (1932: 299) claims that before the 15th century there were strong cultural connections between Trebizond and Crimean Greeks, and these connections could have influenced the choice of asylum together with geographic proximity.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶ The singer was born in 1904. Phonemic transcription and translation were made by the authors of the chapter.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷ Data used in this chapter is described in §1.2.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸ SMG stands for Standard Modern Greek.</footnote>
register and can sometimes be superdialectal, as it was demonstrated by Agniya Desnitskaya (1970) on the basis of Albanian tradition.<fnref n="9" />

Nevertheless, first very inconsistent descriptions of Azov Greek already mentioned its similarities the Pontic variety from Trebizond (Blau 1874: 578). Using the data of Blau, Paul Kretschmer (1905: 18) came to the conclusion that Azov Greek is a variety of Pontic since the both display palatalization in similar contexts (3).<fnref n="10" />

### 3. Rum. ['ʃer] 'hand' and Pont.<fnref n="11" /> ['ʃer] vs. SMG χέρι ['çěri]

This idea became very popular both with many Pontic Greeks<fnref n="12" /> and scholars (cf. Symeonidis & Tompaidis 1999: 133–139) but it has not been unanimously accepted (cf. Dawkins 1942: 24). Kretschmer (1905: 18) himself was not sure about the “Pontic nature” of Azov Greek since he noticed certain phonetic similarities with Northern Greek such as raising and loss of unstressed vowels (2).

In this chapter, we compare some features of Azov Greek and Pontic using data gathered during fieldworks which has never been used for these goals before (see §1.2). After a brief description of the proximity of both linguistic varieties to Ancient Greek (§2), we demonstrate some common (§3) and distinctive features (§4) at different linguistic levels and then, we share the results of dialectometric analysis (§5) based on the comparison of peculiarities described in previous sections. Since some of our data is still being processed and cannot be used in the current research, we do not intend to draw any unambiguous conclusion. First of all, we want to demonstrate that the nature of exact relationship between both varieties is worth being discussed.

## 1.2 The data involved in the research

In this research we mainly analyze two types of data:

<footnote n="9">⁹ This phenomenon is also frequently attested in Greece. For example, it is impossible to find any traditional song in Tsakonian, and even a famous Tsakonian dance has words in Standard Modern Greek — Σου ‘πα, μανά… /’Su=pa ma’na/ ‘[I] told you, mommy…’ (for more details see Kisilier 2016).</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ The example is chosen by the authors of the chapter.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹ Pont. stands for Pontic.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹² Pontic Greeks think that Azov Greek is a corrupt version of Pontic as they generally can understand it easily. However, mutual understanding cannot be regarded as a serious criterion for this claim although it may reflect some genealogical closeness.</footnote>
1) **Words from the core vocabulary.**<fnref n="13" /> In the frame of another research project, one of the authors of the chapter (Maxim Kisilier) created a lexical database of 7 Greek linguistic varieties<fnref n="14" /> which includes 260 lexemes from Azov Greek and 296 — from Pontic. Most of the words for this database were collected from native speakers within the last 6 years although complemented by means of Azov Greek and Pontic dictionaries.<fnref n="15" /> Currently, the database is still under construction and could not be processed properly for this research. This is why it was used only as a collection of examples in order to compare the representation for a same lemma in different linguistic varieties of Greek. The examples from the database are given here without any further reference.

2) **Phrases from questionnaires, narratives and conversations** used for analysis of morphology and syntax were mostly collected in Greek-speaking villages of the Cis-Azov region between 2001–2006 during a series of fieldworks organized by St. Petersburg University.<fnref n="16" /> Respective Pontic data was obtained in 2022–2023 for the *Atlas of the Balkan Linguistic Area* (Adamou & Sobolev 2025).<fnref n="17" />

<footnote n="13">¹³ These words are related to the following 194 notions: 1. white, 2. near, 3. big, 4. all, 5. wind, 6. see, 7. water, 8. hair, 9. louse, 10. eye, 11. say, 12. year, 13. head, 14. mountain, 15. breast, 16. give, 17. far, 18. two, 19. tree, 20. long, 21. rain (noun), 22. road, 23. smoke (noun), 24. eat, 25. yellow, 26. woman, 27. burn, 28. belly, 29. fat, 30. star, 31. green, 32. earth, 33. snake, 34. know, 35. ashes, 36. tooth, 37. go, 38. name, 39. stone, 40. skin, 41. knee, 42. bark (of the tree), 43. root, 44. short, 45. bone, 46. red, 47. blood, 48. round, 49. wing, 50. who, 51. bite, 52. lie, 53. fly (verb), 54. leaf, 55. moon, 56. small, 57. many, 58. man, 59. we, 60. meat, 61. not, 62. new, 63. foot, 64. nail, 65. nose, 66. night, 67. cloud, 68. fire, 69. one, 70. sand, 71. liver, 72. drink, 73. swim, 74. full, 75. come, 76. bird, 77. horn, 78. mouth, 79. hand, 80. fish (noun), 81. seed, 82. heart, 83. sit, 84. hear, 85. dog, 86. sun, 87. salt, 88. sleep, 89. stand, 90. dry, 91. warm, 92. thin, 93. that, 94. thou, 95. heavy, 96. kill, 97. die, 98. ear, 99. tail, 100. cold, 101. good, 102. person, 103. worm, 104. black, 105. what, 106. neck, 107. this, 108. I, 109. tongue, 110. egg, 111. run, 112. beat, hit, 113. fear, be afraid of, 114. scold, 115. breathe in, 116. rope, 117. entrails, 118. inside, 119. turn, twist, 120. you (polite or plural), 121. where, 122. swallow, 123. rotten (adjective), 124. dirty, 125. share, divide, 126. day, 127. hold, 128. others, 129. think, 130. blow, 131. if, 132. press, squeeze, 133. animal, 134. live, 135. slaughter, 136. here, 137. and, 138. play, 139. measure (verb), 140. vomit, 141. as, 142. throw, 143. when, 144. ice, 145. forest, 146. mother, 147. sweep, 148. wet, 149. sea, 150. inflate, 151. on/to the left, 152. on/to the right, 153. sky, 154. some (plural), 155. few, 156. smell (verb), 157. lake, 158. sharp, 159. father, 160. hunt, 161. fall, 162. stick, 163. sing, 164. spit, 165. bad, 166. why, because, 167. right, correct, 168. dust, 169. five, 170. baby, kid, child, 171. cut, 172. river, 173. straight, 174. dig, 175. with, 176. bind, tie, 177. laugh, 178. snow, 179. wash, 180. there (not here), 181. rub, 182. push (verb), 183. father, 184. grass, 185. three, 186. mist, fog, 187. pull, 188. narrow, 189. fruit, 190. flower, 191. scratch, 192. four, 193. wide, 194. sew.</footnote>

<footnote n="14">¹⁴ Greek from Dropull in Southern Albania, Cypriot, Lesbian, Pontic, Azov Greek, Northern Chiotic and Tsakonian from Peloponnese.</footnote>

<footnote n="15">¹⁵ Both linguistic varieties have a relatively rich lexicographic tradition. There are at least four recent dictionaries of Azov Greek (Kir'akov 1999; Animitsa et al. 2003; Kharadabot 2006; Diamantopoulo-Rionis et al. 2006) and four dictionaries of Pontic (Papadopoulos 1958-1961; Nikopolitidis 2017; Tursun 2019; Zimov 2020). Although the value and importance of these dictionaries should not be underestimated, they either lack important lexicographic and grammatical information, or they should be used cautiously with extra checking.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">¹⁶ Main results of this fieldwork research are published in Kisilier (ed.) 2009 and Baranova 2010.</footnote>

<footnote n="17">¹⁷ The *Atlas of the Balkan Linguistic Area* (ABLA) has been funded by French National Research Agency (ANR-21-CE27-0020) granted to Dr Evangelia Adamou (CNRS) and the Russian Science Foundation (No. 22-48-09003) granted to Prof. Dr Andrey N. Sobolev (Russian Academy of Science). The ABLA database includes about 60 language datasets, and seven of them are varieties of Greek. Except Azov Greek (from Maloianysol') and Pontic (from Yessentuki), these are Standard Modern Greek of Thessaloniki, Northern Chiotic (from Lagkada), Cypriot (from Dymes), Tsakonian (from Tyros) and Greek of Southern Albania (from Dropull). Over 100 linguistic features from various linguistic domains are under scrutiny in this project. As for Azov Greek and Pontic, the data discussed here are mostly morphological and syntactic peculiarities (more details in §§3 and 4 of this chapter).</footnote>
## 1.3 Main difficulties of the research

Analyzing linguistic data from Azov Greek and Pontic requires to face two major difficulties: the language system's inherent instability (§1.3.1), and a range of local subvariants/subdialects (§1.3.2). Both problems are closely interrelated and typical of vernaculars, but for the sake of clarity we shall regard them separately.

### 1.3.1 Language system's inherent instability

By the term 'language system's inherent instability', we actually mean the absence of any standard. This situation is typical for many linguistic varieties which have no long literary tradition. For both Azov Greek and Pontic there were multiple attempts to create local literatures (cf. Kisilier 2017) but for various reasons they did not lead to elaboration of a linguistic norm.<fnref n="18" /> The traditional response to this instability is linguistic purism, i.e., a belief that there was once a more proper variant of the language, more genuine, free from borrowings and recent influence from other languages, especially from the dominant language of the region. In practice, it usually means that the descriptive linguist strives to work with an older female speaker who is generally regarded as a keeper of traditional language and culture and often neglects younger speakers. Peter Trudgill (2003: 48) even suggests that "that any classification of traditional Greek dialects that aims at portraying and summarising the full extent of our knowledge of the geographical configuration of these dialects should ideally be based on a description of the situation existing between, say, 1820 and 1920, when they were at their fullest extent, rather than on the situation today".

This solution is not as good as it may seem at first glance because the period displayed as an ideal may hide some problems we are just unaware of. We would like to illustrate this with an example from Tsakonian, generally treated as the most ancient of existing linguistic varieties of Greek, which has directly derived from Ancient Doric Laconian.<fnref n="19" /> Until 1970, there was no electricity in the Tsakonian-speaking area, and it is only in 1960 that a proper road between Tsakonian-speaking villages and other regions of Greece was built. So, one could expect that between 1820 and 1920 (the period discussed by Trudgill), Tsakonian would have existed in its purest form. However, a look at the phrase taken from some dialogues in Tsakonian (4) collected in the first half of the 19th century suggests that it was not the case:

<footnote n="18">¹⁸ Even the orthography in the existing dictionaries (see fn. 15) sometimes is very inconsistent.</footnote>

<footnote n="19">¹⁹ This statement can be found in almost any paper about Tsakonian, and we decided that no reference is required here. The truthfulness of this opinion is another problem and we shall not discuss it in this chapter.</footnote>
4. Ἐζού, ἂ' δὲν κριθοῦ ὄνι
ezú a ὄen=grith-ú ó-ni
I if NEG<fnref n="20" />=be.accused.PFV-SBJV.1SG NEG-be.PRS.1SG
πλερούκου
plerúkʰ-u
pay-PTCP.M.SG

‘If I am not accused [at court], [I shall] not pay’ (Costakis 1983: 24)

In this example, one can easily notice the Standard Modern Greek negation δεν /ðen/ along with Tsakonian o (< AG<fnref n="21" /> οὐ[k] /o:[k]/). It means that between 1820 and 1920, even Tsakonian was not free from the influence of Modern Greek, i.e., pure/ideal Tsakonian, probably, had never existed.

In this view we tried to observe Azov Greek and Pontic as they actually exist with all borrowings, traces of current impact from other languages and frequent code-switching, etc.

### 1.3.2 Subdialects

Both Azov Greek and Pontic have several local subvariants. Azov Greek is usually divided into 5 subdialects (Sokolov 1930: 63–64) which are encountered in the following villages (see Map 1):<fnref n="22" />

[1] Urzuf and Yalta;

[2] Bolshoj Yanisol (Velika Novosilka), Styla and Konstantinopil';

[3] Bolshaya (Staraya) Karakuba, Novaya Karakuba (Krasna Polyana) and Buhas;

[4] Sartana, Chermalyk and Makedonivka;

[5] Maloyanisol', Novoyanisol', Truzhenka and Cherdakly (Kremenivka).

<footnote n="20">²⁰ All abbreviations of grammatical terms are given according to Comrie et al. 2015.</footnote>

<footnote n="21">²¹ AG stands for Ancient Greek.</footnote>

<footnote n="22">²² This subdivision is based on the linguistic similarity between these local variants of Azov Greek and Standard Modern Greek.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>**Map 1:** Local variants of Azov Greek (Kisilier 2022a: 13).</figcaption></figure>

The aforementioned variants differ almost at all linguistic levels, syntax put apart (e.g. 5; more details in Kisilier 2022a: 13–14).

5. a. Vocabulary

negation: *ðen* [1, 2, 4], *ti* [3], *ði* [5]<sup>23</sup>

b. Phonetics

‘head’: [ti‘faλ] [1], [ti‘fal] [2], [‘ftal] [3, 4], [‘tʃfal] [5]

c. Morphology

‘[I] did (IPFV.PST)’: *jékamna* [1], *kámijka* [2, 3, 5], *ékaya* [3] (Kuznetsova 2009: 289)

<footnote n="23"><sup>23</sup> The last two variants originate from AG οὖχι /ύχι/.</footnote>
The situation with Pontic is even more complex. In Asia Minor, there were approximately 14 local variants (more details in Papadopoulos 1958–1961: (1) ç–θ, ıç). At the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, large Pontic communities also appeared in other countries. The language of these new communities has not been well described, and it is not yet fully understood, whether one should consider that new subdialects emerged there, or whether they are somehow linked to one of the original 14 variants. Anyway, both vocabulary (6a) and phonetics (6b) reflect some differences between these (new) subdialects.

## 6. a. Vocabulary

'table': *stól* (Kars)<fnref n="24" /> vs. *trapézi* (Yessentuki, Southern Russia)

'OK': *éðone* (Pontic in Greece),<fnref n="25" /> no analogue in Pontic of Russia

## b. Phonetics

'[I] am afraid': [foʻγumɛ] (Pontic in Abkhazia, Southern Caucasus) vs. [foʻvumɛ] (Yessentuki) (Kisilier 2022b: 77)

'baker': [furuʻd̥is] (Greece) vs. [furunʻtʃis] (Yessentuki)

According to Eloeva (2004: 106), there are some local peculiarities in nominal morphology as well: in Pontic of Batumi (Georgia), the flexion of feminine nouns in nominative/accusative is -es, while in Vityazevo (Southern Russia), it is -as. Morphological and syntactic differences in local varieties of Pontic still require further thorough investigation. Actually we suppose that Pontic in Greece and Pontic in Russia may display different basic word orders (see e.g. 33b).

No detailed linguistic descriptions of Azov Greek and Pontic local varieties are currently available, and the data in this chapter come from the two varieties which we know personally the best: Azov Greek of Maloyanisol' and Pontic of Yessentuki.

# 2. Ancient Greek features in Pontic and Azov Greek

It is generally believed that contemporary varieties of Greek (except Tsakonian) have no direct connection with Ancient Greek (cf. Andriotis 1981: 6). Anyway, there is no doubt that many varieties of Greek possess multiple archaisms (see Tzitzilis 2013) and Pontic and Azov Greek are no exception here. In this section, we shall discuss some features that Pontic and Azov Greek have inherited from Ancient Greek.

<footnote n="24">²⁴ A loanword from Russian.</footnote>

<footnote n="25">²⁵ Presumably, originates from SMG ἕγινε /ˈeyine/.</footnote>
## 2.1 Vocabulary

Both Azov Greek and Pontic have multiple lexemes of Ancient Greek origin and many of them have parallels in Standard Modern Greek. Such words are frequent in all varieties of Greek, so there is nothing special that they are also present in Azov Greek and Pontic. More interestingly there are some Ancient Greek words which survived in Azov Greek and Pontic but either are no longer in use in Standard Modern Greek, or the form of the lexemes has radically changed in these varieties. This kind of vocabulary can be divided into three types:

(a) Words that are encountered both in Pontic and Azov Greek (7).<fnref n="26" />

7. Pont. ci (negation) and Rum. ifi (5a) < AG οὖχι /úxi/ vs. SMG δεν /ðen/

(b) Words that are preserved only in Pontic (8).

8. a. Pont. *eréxkome* '[I] like' < AG ὀρέγομαι /ο'regomaj/ 'desire' vs. SMG μου αρέσει /mu=a'resi/ 'I like' (Kisilier 2023: 343) and Rum. *biginaévu*

b. Pont. *epíka* '[I] did' < AG πεποίηκα /pe'poje:ka/ vs. SMG έκανα /'ekana/ (Kisilier 2023: 342) and Rum. *kámi/ka* (5c)

c. Pont. *ολίγω* 'few' < AG ὀλίγοι /γο'ligoj/ vs. SMG λίγοι /'λiji/ and Rum. *lúji*

(c) Words that exist only in Azov Greek.

9. Rum. *ftír[a]* 'louse' < AG φθείρ /'ftʰε:r/ vs. SMG ψείρα /'psíra/ and Pont. *psíra*

It seems that the most frequent is the type (b), while the type (c) is the rarest of all three.

## 2.2 Phonetics

In this section, we regard two phonetic archaisms: the retention of Ancient Greek /e:/ (§2.2.1) and final /-n/ (§2.2.2).

<footnote n="26">²⁶ Possibly, Pont. *τέλες* ‘daddy, father’ and Rum. *táta* originate from AG τέττα /’tetta/ ‘address to an elderly man’ if it is not a Slavic borrowing (cf. Russian *мама* /’tama/ ‘daddy’).</footnote>
### 2.2.1 *Ancient Greek /e:/*

In most varieties of Greek, Ancient Greek η /e:/ has become /i/. In Pontic and Azov Greek, Ancient Greek /e:/ may be retained as /e/ (10).

10. Pont. [skoʻλek] ‘worm’ and Rum. [skuʻλɛf] < AG σκώληξ /'skɔ:le:ks/ vs. SMG σκουλήκι [skuʻλici]

However, the retention of Ancient Greek /e:/ in Pontic and Azov is rather irregular and there are numerous instances (cf. 11) where it has become /i/ as it is the case in Standard Modern Greek<fnref n="27" />.

11. Pont. ['iklɛn] ‘sun’ and Rum. ['iklus] < AG ἦλιος /'e:lios/, cf. SMG ἦλιος ['iklɒs]

### 2.2.2 *Retention of the initial /o-/*

In multiple cases, the initial /o-/- which existed previously in Ancient Greek or in Hellenic Koiné was lost. Pontic, however, often keeps this /o-/- (12, cf. 46).

12. Pont. [ɒp'sar] ‘fish’ < NTG<fnref n="28" /> ὀψάριον /ɒp'sarion/ vs. SMG ψάρι ['psarj] and Rum. ['psarj]

### 2.2.3 /-n/

Another important phonetic peculiarity of Pontic is the final /-n/ for nouns in neuter which was typical for Ancient Greek and disappeared in Standard Modern Greek and most Greek varieties (13, cf. 43).

13. Pont. [ftɛ'ron] ‘wing’ < AG πτερόν /pte'ron/ vs. SMG φτερό [ftɛ'ro] and Rum. [ftu'ro]

This feature which is very frequent (almost regular) in Pontic is totally absent in Azov Greek.

However, Pontic frequently deploys /-n/ in cases where it never existed in Ancient Greek (14, cf. 33b).

<footnote n="27">²⁷ Standard Modern Greek, to be honest, also has examples like πατέρας [pa'tɛrəs] ‘father’ (< AG πατήρ /pa'te:r/) with the so-called Ancient Greek /e/.</footnote>

<footnote n="28">²⁸ NTG stands for New Testament Greek.</footnote>
14. a. Pont. ['γonaton] ‘knee’ vs. Rum. ['γonat], cf. SMG γόνατο ['γonato] < AG γόνυ /'gony/

b. Pont. ['onɛman] ‘name’ vs. Rum. ['onuma] and SMG ὁνομα ['onoma] < AG ὄνομα /'onoma/

Moreover, /-n/ in Pontic may be also used with masculine (40).<fnref n="29" />

## 2.3 Morphology

Both Azov Greek and Pontic feature at least one morphological archaism which does not coincide in the both varieties. These are Pontic possessive pronoun (§2.3.1) and the absence of the opposition between strong and weak pronouns in plural in Azov Greek (§2.3.2).

Some varieties of Pontic (e.g., Ophitic) also have Ancient Greek infinitive (more details in Sitaridou 2014). Since infinitive does not exist in most varieties of Pontic and is absent from Pontic of Yessentuki, it will not be analyzed in this chapter.

### 2.3.1 Possessive pronoun

Pontic has possessive pronouns similar to Ancient Greek ἐμος /e'mos/ ‘my’, σός /'sos/ ‘your’, etc. (15).

15.

t

em-ón

i

γar-í

DEF.N.NGEN.SG

POSS.1SG-SG

DEF.F.NOM.SG

wife-NOM.SG

‘my wife’ (Kisilier 2025c)

Unlike Ancient Greek, Pontic possessive pronouns have no grammatical gender and are in terms of forms always neuter.

On the contrary, Azov Greek possessive pronoun (16a) is derived from the genitive form as in Standard Modern Greek (16b). To be fair, we should mention that the same pattern is gaining ground in Pontic as well (16c).

<footnote n="29">²⁹ The same phenomenon is encountered in Pontic adjectives; for more details see Karatsareas (2014).</footnote>
16. a. Azov Greek:

tu k-ó=m
DEF.SG own-NF.SG=POSS.1SG
tu spít-ø
DEF.SG house-SG

'my house' (Kisilier 2025a)

b. Standard Modern Greek:

o φίλος μου
/o 'fil-oz=mu/
DEF.M.NOM.SG friend-NOM.SG=POSS.1SG

'my friend' (Kisilier 2025b)

c. Pontic:

i γar-í=m
DEF.F.NOM.SG wife-NOM.SG=POSS.1SG

'my wife' (Kisilier 2025c)<fnref n="30" />

### 2.3.2 Opposition between strong and weak pronouns in plural

In some dialects of Ancient Greek (e.g., Attic and Ionic), there was no opposition between strong and weak pronouns in plural as these Ancient Greek dialects had only accentuated forms.<fnref n="31" /> Some traces of the situation can be still seen in Tsakonian in the frame of clitic doubling where a strong pronoun in plural is generally doubled with a singular weak pronoun as if an appropriate clitic pronoun in plural does not exist (17).

(17) **m=or-ákate** **námu**
1SG.OBL=see-AOR.2PL 1PL.OBL

'[you] saw us' (Kisilier 2021: 241; cf. Joseph 1990: 177; for more details see
Kisilier 2024: 822–825)

In Azov Greek, the same phenomenon is coded otherwise: in clitic doubling, one weak pronoun in plural often reduplicates another weak pronoun in plural (18).

<footnote n="30">³⁰ Azov Greek and Pontic -m clearly originates from -mu, cf. *manútsa*=*mu* (1).</footnote>

<footnote n="31">³¹ For example, 1PL: ἡμῶν /'e:~mɔ:n/ — GEN., ἡμῖν /'e:~min/ — DAT and ἡμᾶς /'e:~mas/ — ACC.</footnote>
(18)

sís

2PL.NOM

'you brought us up' (Borisova 2009: 401)

mas=meyáln-it=mas

1PL.OBL=bring.up.IPFV-PST.2PL=1PL.OBL

The possibility of such an “unexpected” use of clitic pronouns demonstrates that speakers of Azov Greek do not make a clear distinction between stressed and unstressed personal pronouns in plural.

## 2.4 Syntax

Syntactic archaisms are probably the rarest ones. However, Azov Greek and Pontic have at least two syntactic peculiarities that are worth being discussed: pronominal syntax (§2.4.1) and sentential clitics (§2.4.2).

### 2.4.1 Pronominal syntax

By the term ‘pronominal syntax’ we mean the rules that regulate the position of clitic pronouns (syntactically dependent on the verb) within the sentence, clause, or Verb Phrase. It is well-known that in Ancient Greek enclitic pronouns<fnref n="32" /> were placed on the second position in the sentence or clause<fnref n="33" /> according to Wackernagel’s law (Wackernagel 1892) and could be easily hosted by any accentuated syntactic element and thus be far away from the governing verb (19).

19.

Τότε μοι

ó

/'tote=moj

γo

then=1SG.DAT

DEF.M.NOM.SG

άδελφὸς

adel'pʰ-os

brother-NOM.SG

λέγει

'leg-ɛ:/

say.IPFV-PRS.3SG

'Then, the brother tells me...' (Prothagoras Platonis 310B)

According to Dunn (1989), by the period of Hellenic Koiné, the verb has moved to the initial position of the sentence (clause?, cf. fn. 33) and thus, it has become a logical host for an enclitic pronoun in a Koiné text. Even if other patterns were attested then, it was amongst the most frequent and neutral ones.

This pattern (i.e., pronominal clitic immediately after the governing verb)<fnref n="34" /> in its stiff version has become the only possible clitic position in Pontic (20).

<footnote n="32">³² Ancient Greek had no object proclitic pronouns.</footnote>

<footnote n="33">³³ We shall not discuss here how one should understand Wackernagel’s term *Satz* and what exactly could be meant by the “second position” since this issue has been already analyzed many times (e.g., by Janse 2000; Pappas 2004; Anderson 2005; Zaliznyak 2008).</footnote>

<footnote n="34">³⁴ So-called X⁰ clitics in terminology of Condoravdi & Kiparsky (2002: 18f).</footnote>
20. e=pík=a=to
PST-do.PFV-PST.1SG=3SG.N.NGEN
'[I] did it' (Kisilier 2025c)

Azov Greek follows different regulations. The pronominal clitic is generally placed behind the verb (21a) but whenever any modal particle or negation appears in front of the Verb Phrase, it will inevitably “attract” the pronominal clitic to form a cluster with a particle or negation and will then precede the verb (21b).<fnref n="35" />

21. a. **é-kleps-is=mi**
PST-steal.PFV-PST.2SG=1SG.OBL
'[you] have stolen me'

b. **θa=ta=fáy-u**
FUT-3PL=eat.PFV-PRS.1SG
'tomorrow
'[I] shall eat it tomorrow' (Kisilier 2022a: 9)

Pontic and Azov Greek situations actually reflect different chronological stages in the historical development of Greek pronominal syntax (more details in Kisilier 2024: 801–813). Thus, Pontic is closer to Koiné while Azov Greek reflects the pattern which appeared in the 6th–7th centuries (so-called Late Koiné), but was fully developed by the 12th century (Mackridge 1993).

### 2.4.2 Sentential clitics

Ancient Greek widely used particles (e.g., γάρ /gar/, δέ /de/)<fnref n="36" /> which functioned as topic markers. These particles have disappeared from Standard Modern Greek and its varieties, and generally the position of the topic is underlined by other means. However, both Azov Greek (22a, cf. 28a, 33a, 42a) and Pontic (22b) have maintained the Ancient Greek pattern while making also use of another particle pa (probably derived from Ancient Greek πάλιν /ˈpalin/ ‘again’) as markers of topicalization.

22. a. **at-ós**
3-M.NOM.SG
*ðίáv-İ*
go.PFV- PST.3SG
*árta*
rather
*makrá*
far

<footnote n="35">³⁵ Xmax clitics according to Condoravdi & Kiparsky (2002: 5f).</footnote>

<footnote n="36">³⁶ Although traditional Greek orthography treats these particles as accentuated words, there is no doubt that they were clitics as their position was regulated by Wackernagel’s law.</footnote>
γό=pa na=páy-u
1SG.NOM=TOP FUT=go.IPFV-PRS.1SG

‘he went rather far away, I shall go [as well]’ (Kisilier 2022a: 10)

b. at-ós=pa θél-ø na=ért-e
3-M.NOM.SG want-PRS.3SG SBJV=go.PFV-PST.3SG
met emás
with 1PL.OBL

‘he wants to come with us’<fnref n="37" />

As it is clear from (22), both in Azov Greek (22a) and in Pontic (22b), *pa* occupies Wackernagel’s (second) position just as Ancient Greek particles did.

## 2.5 Summing up

Azov Greek and Pontic demonstrate some archaic peculiarities of Ancient Greek origin at various linguistic levels. Some of them coincide in both varieties whereas other features differ. Table 1 gives an overview of most significant archaisms observed in the chapter and shows that they are more frequent in Pontic.<fnref n="38" />

<table><caption>**Table 1:** Archaisms in Azov Greek and Pontic.</caption><thead><tr><td>Archaism</td><td>Rum.</td><td>Pont.</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>/e/ &lt; AG /e:/</td><td>+</td><td>+</td></tr><tr><td>/o-/<br/>-n/</td><td>—</td><td>+</td></tr><tr><td>AG possessive pronouns</td><td>—</td><td>+</td></tr><tr><td>No opposition between strong and weak pronouns in plural</td><td>+</td><td>—</td></tr><tr><td>Clitic pronouns in Wackernagel’s position</td><td>—</td><td>+</td></tr><tr><td>Sentential clitics</td><td>+</td><td>+</td></tr></tbody></table>

## 3. Common features

If Azov Greek is actually a variety of Pontic, one could expect multiple linguistic similarities between Azov Greek and Pontic. Such similarities can be identified. Some of them seem self-evident since they are relevant for all or for the majority of Greek varieties including Standard Modern Greek, e.g.,<fnref n="39" /> absence of dative, no connective article, gender distinction for 3rd singular and plural pronouns,

<footnote n="37">³⁷ This example was prompted to us by Arkhontissa Konstantinidou and Viktor Stoforandov.</footnote>

<footnote n="38">³⁸ Similarities in vocabulary could not be taken into account.</footnote>

<footnote n="39">³⁹ Most of the features listed here were used as distinctive parameters in the *Atlas of the Balkan Linguistic Area* (Adamou & Sobolev 2025).</footnote>
absence of a reflexive possessive pronoun, no difference in marking of animate and inanimate direct object, no evidentiality, no specialized verb forms for subjunctive, clitic doubling (see also §4.3.1), possibility of sentence initial clitic position, pro-drop (see §4.2.5), no clitic-climbing,<fnref n="40" /> etc.

More interesting for us are features attested in both Azov Greek and Pontic but absent or different from Standard Modern Greek. Symeonidis & Tompaidis (1999: 133–139) made an attempt to create a list of such similarities but their conclusions are not as convincing as they could be. Most of all, they pay attention to the coincidences like *éf*<fnref n="41" /> ‘[he] has’, *én*<fnref n="42" /> ‘[s/he] is’, *traγóð*<fnref n="43" /> ‘song’, i.e., the cases where they could find some forms or patterns of word formation which seem to be alike or even the same without discussing that pattern which could lead to the similarity of the particular example. Moreover, Symeonidis & Tompaidis (1999: 138–139) made an index of phrases present in Azov Greek that are typical of Pontic. We believe that such kind of similarities cannot reveal anything specific about relations between Azov Greek and Pontic.<fnref n="44" /> One must have in mind that:

(a) both share some phonetic peculiarities (e.g., palatalization, fall of unstressed vowels) which are also relevant for other linguistic varieties of Greek origin as well;

(b) Azov Greek and Pontic had been in contact for a long period of time. This fact is well known and these contacts took place not only in the Crimea but also after the relocation. Thus, in 1826, Greek migrants from Asia Minor founded a village Anadol not far from Cherdakly (Animitsa & Kisilier 2009: 31).

Nevertheless, Symeonidis & Tompaidis (1999: 134) draw our attention to some important facts as well, e.g., formation of imperfect past with the affix -i/κ- (cf. 5c, 8b). We agree with Petros Karatsareas (2019: 168) that such features suggest that Azov Greek is a variety of Asia Minor Greek. According to Karatsareas (2014: 79), Azov Greek “developed into a separate dialect out of a formerly Pontic variety”. Historical dialectology of Greek often relies only on hypotheses (regardless, how logical they may seem) and not facts due to the lacks in the documentation. Actually, our goal is not to argue or to support Pontic origin of Azov Greek but to clarify its contemporary state in relation to Pontic. In this section, we have listed some systematic similarities at different linguistic levels.

<footnote n="40">⁴⁰ Clitic-climbing seems to be relevant only for Italiot Greek (cf. Chatzikyriakidis 2010).</footnote>

<footnote n="41">⁴¹ Symeonidis & Tompaidis (1999) use Greek alphabet with diacritics for Azov Greek and Pontic examples. Here and forth, we transform their examples in IPA.</footnote>

<footnote n="42">⁴² According to our field-research data, one could expect *én* for Azov Greek. Maybe it happens because Greek alphabet with diacritics cannot clearly reflect certain peculiarities of Azov Greek and Pontic phonetics.</footnote>

<footnote n="43">⁴³ More typical for Azov Greek is *traγóð*; see also fn. 42.</footnote>

<footnote n="44">⁴⁴ It is important to mention that according to Symeonidis & Tompaidis (1999: 139), “Pontic” elements in Azov Greek are frequently used together with the Northern Greek ones.</footnote>
**3.1 Vocabulary**

We consider that vocabulary is the least demonstrative domain for our goal especially when varieties exist in the same or similar environment. Still, in (23), we provide two examples of common borrowings which are not encountered in Standard Modern Greek.

23. a. Rum. *jiralaévo* ‘to injure’ < Urum *jaralá-*
   Pont. *jeralávo* < Turk. <fnref n="45" /> *yaralamak*

b. Rum. *ḍzīngár*<fnref n="46" /> ‘liver’ < Urum *ḍzījér*
   Pont. *tīfikár* < Turk. *ciğer*

**3.2** **Phonetics**

In §1.1, we have already mentioned that both Azov Greek and Pontic have palatalization (e.g. 3, 24a).
There are other phonetic similarities that can be mentioned as well.

3.2.1 *Loss of unstressed [i] and [u]*

The loss of unstressed [i] and [u] is generally described as a Northern Greek specificity which was
one of the reasons to classify Azov Greek as a Northern variety (2b). However, similar examples may
be found in Pontic (24).

24. a. Rum. ['nu] ‘nail’ and Pont. ['niʃ] vs. SMG νύχτι ['niçi], cf. Lesb.<fnref n="47" /> ['nix]

b. Rum. [ku'toplu] ‘hen’ vs. SMG κοτόπουλο [ko'topulo]
   Pont. ['eksa] ‘[I] heard (aorist)’<fnref n="48" /> vs. SMG ἁκουσα ['akusa]

3.2.2 *Fall of [-γ-]*

Both Azov Greek and Pontic demonstrate rare examples when [-γ-] is lost (25).

25. Rum. ['maisa] ‘witch’ vs. SMG μάγισσα ['maɣisa]
   Pont. ['maos] ‘magician’ vs. SMG μάγος ['maɣos]

<footnote n="45">⁴⁵ Turk. stands for Turkish.</footnote>

<footnote n="46">⁴⁶ Usually in the expression *mávru ḍzīngár*.</footnote>

<footnote n="47">⁴⁷Lesb. designates Lesbian, one of the Northern Greek varieties.</footnote>

<footnote n="48">⁴⁸ We are grateful to Danil Lonkin for this example.</footnote>
### 3.2.3 Glide formation

In Standard Modern Greek and some of Greek varieties, the combination of /i/ and /a/ creates a glide with an accent on /a/. Azov Greek and Pontic generally avoid glide formation (26).

26. Rum. [fuˈtuj̩a] ‘fire’ and Pont. [foˈtia] vs. SMG φωτιά [foˈtça]

## 3.3 Morphology

In this section, we understand morphology in a broader sense including both the word-formation and some morphosyntactic issues.

### 3.3.1 Word formation

Some rare patterns of word formation (27) coincide in both Azov Greek and Pontic but differ from the models used in Standard Modern Greek.

27. Rum. saxtárъ ‘ash’ and Pont. saxtár vs. SMG στάχτη /ˈstaxtɪ/

### 3.3.2 Indirect object marking

In Azov Greek (28a) and Pontic (28b), accusative without preposition marks indirect object.

<table><tr><td rowspan="7">28.</td><td rowspan="7">a.</td><td><b>ta</b></td><td><b>p̂ið-ija</b></td><td>tát-a</td></tr><tr><td>DEF.PL</td><td>son-PL</td><td>father-SG</td></tr><tr><td>t=í-fir-in</td><td>ta</td><td>podárc-is</td></tr><tr><td>3PL.N=PST-bring-PST.3SG</td><td>DEF.PL</td><td>gift-PL</td></tr><tr><td>a</td><td><b>ta</b></td><td><b>kurít-f-a=t</b></td></tr><tr><td>but</td><td>DEF.PL</td><td>girl.PL-PL=POSS.3SG.NF</td></tr><tr><td>típus=pa</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td colspan="4">'the father brought gifts to the sons and nothing to his daughters' (Borisova 2009: 397)</td></tr></table>

<table><tr><td>b.</td><td>eyó</td><td>at-ó</td><td>e-ðék-a</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>1SG.NOM</td><td>3-SG.N.NGEN</td><td>PST-give.PFV-PST.1SG</td></tr></table>
ton síndrof-ó=m

DEF.M.ACC.SG friend-ACC.SG=POSS.1SG

‘I gave it to my friend’ (Kisilier 2025c)

The reason is that genitive in both varieties is primarily connected with the possessive function. However, even possessive function of genitive is very much restricted in Azov Greek (more details in Mertyris & Kisilier 2017; see also §4.2.3).

### 3.3.3 Genitive/dative merger for pronouns

Restricted use of genitive eliminates the genitive/dative merger typical for Standard Modern Greek, especially for pronouns. Therefore, personal pronouns in Azov Greek (29a) and Pontic (29b, c) actually have only two cases: nominative (or direct case) and oblique.

29. a. **ména** fén-it=mi

1SG.OBL seem.PFV-PRS.3SG=1SG.OBL

‘[it] seems to me’ (Kisilier 2009: 383; cf. e.g. 19a)

b. **esí** íp-es=men

2SG.NOM say.PFV-PST.2SG=1SG.OBL

‘you told me’

c. **esí** íð-es=men

2SG.NOM see.PFV-PST.2SG=1SG.OBL

‘you saw me’ (Kisilier 2025c)

From (29) it is evident that Azov Greek and Pontic use oblique (i.e., accusative) as the case of indirect object for pronouns.

### 3.3.4 Adjective gradation

Adjective gradation in Azov Greek (30a) and Pontic (30b) is expressed by the means of an analytic form which is the same in both varieties.
30. a. **tf=ál-u=** kal-ós
and=other-NF.SG good-M.NOM.SG
‘better’ (Kisilier 2025a)

b. **ci=álo** émorf-os
and=other beautiful-M.NOM.SG
‘more beautiful’ (Kisilier 2025c)

Unlike Pontic, Azov Greek also has other patterns of adjective gradation, like affix (31a) and clitic and affix for superlative (31b).

31. a. **kal-ítur-ø**
good-CMPR<fnref n="49" />-NF.SG
‘better’ (Ermishkina 2009: 221)

b. **lon=makr-étur-ø**
most=long-CMPR-SG
‘the longest’ (Ermishkina 2009: 222)

**3.4 Syntax**

At first glance, Azov Greek and Pontic syntax (without the peculiarities mentioned in §2.4 put apart) considerably converges with the one of Standard Modern Greek. A more thorough analysis demonstrates that a range of important peculiarities are encountered either in the both varieties (see §§3.4.1 and 3.4.2) or are specific only for one of them (§4.3).

**3.4.1 Basic word order**

Irene Philippaki-Warburton (1985) has proved that the basic word order in Standard Modern Greek is V[erb]S[ubject]O[bject] (32).

<table><tr><td>32.</td><td>έγραψε</td><td>ο</td><td>Γιάννης</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>/'e-γραps-e</td><td>ο</td><td>'Jan-is</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>PST-write.PFV-PST.3SG</td><td>DEF.M.NOM.SG</td><td>John-NOM</td></tr></table>

<footnote n="49">⁴⁹ CMPR stands for comparative.</footnote>
το γράμμα

to 'γrama-ø/

DEF.N.NGEN.SG letter-NGEN.SG

‘John wrote a letter’ (Kisilier 2025b)

In Azov Greek (33a) and Pontic of Yessentuki (33b), both spoken on the territory of the former Russian Empire (Soviet Union), the basic word order is SVO, most probably due to Slavic (primarily Russian) influence.

33. a. ta k-á=m ta γák-is

DEF.PL own-PL=POSS.1SG DEF.PL elder.brother-PL

pánda=pa fér-ni=mi tfindar’áx

always=FOC bring.PFV-PRS.3PL=1SG.OBL sunflower.oil

‘my elder brothers always bring me sunflower oil’ (Kisilier 2009: 376)

b. o Ján-is é-γraps-en γráma-n

DEF.M.NOM.SG John-NOM PST-write.PFV-PST.3SG letter-NGEN.SG

‘John wrote a letter’ (Kisilier 2025c)

### 3.4.2 Zero marking of spatial relations

Some languages, including Ancient Greek and Standard Modern Greek (cf. Bortone 2010), do not require a preposition while describing spatial relations (34).

34. πάω πανεπιστήμιο

/’pa-o panepis’timi-o/

go.PFV-PRS.1SG university-NGEN.SG

‘[I] go to the University’ (Kisilier 2025b)

Nonetheless, neither Azov Greek (35a), nor Pontic (35b) display any examples of zero marking of spatial relations.
35. a. ḍjáv-an s-u Grétsia
go.PFV-PST.3PL in-DEF.SG Greece
'[they] went to Greece' (Kisilier (ed.) 2009: 408)

b. eγό pá-o s-in Aθína
1SG.NOM go.PFV-PRS.1SG to-DEF.F.NOM.SG Athens
'I go to Athens' (Kisilier 2025c)

## 3.5 Summing up

Azov Greek and Pontic have in common a cluster of features which are absent from Standard Modern Greek. It does not mean, however, that all or some of these peculiarities are unattested in other Greek linguistic varieties (Table 2).

<table><caption>**Table 2:** "Azov Greek and Pontic" peculiarities in other Greek varieties.</caption><thead><tr><td>Feature</td><td>Variety</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Loss of [i] and [u]</td><td>Northern Greek, Cappadocian?, Italiot Greek?</td></tr><tr><td>Fall of [-γ-]</td><td>Southeastern Greek, Cappadocian</td></tr><tr><td>No glide formation</td><td>Old Athenian, Tsakonian</td></tr><tr><td>Indirect object in accusative</td><td>Northern Greek, Cappadocian, Tsakonian</td></tr></tbody></table>

## 4. Differences

Despite a set of similarities, Azov Greek and Pontic show multiple differences. Some of them may seem insignificant while others are traditionally regarded as essential isoglosses to classify Modern Greek dialects. It is out the scope of this chapter to list all differences between Azov Greek and Pontic, and we would like just to mention that they can be found at all linguistic levels. We shall not discuss here differences in vocabulary,<fnref n="50" /> except one which is very important for Modern Greek dialectology (cf. Contossopoulos 1983–1984; Nicholas 2004): Azov Greek belongs to that type of Greek varieties where ‘what’ is *ti*, while in all Pontic dialects, regardless their possible contacts, “what” is expressed with *do* or *d̄o*.

### 4.1 Phonetics

In phonetics, Azov Greek demonstrates much more similarities with Northern Greek vocalism than Pontic.

<footnote n="50">⁵⁰ We believe that lexical differences are even less demonstrative than lexical coincidences especially because the fact that we failed to find a lexical equivalent does not imply by all means actual absence of the required word in the variety under scrutiny.</footnote>
#### 4.1.1 /e/ > /i/

As we mentioned in (2a), unstressed /e/ consistently becomes /i/ in Azov Greek while for Pontic this feature is totally irrelevant (36).

36. Rum. ['potuı] ‘when’, cf. Lesb. ['poti] vs. Pont. ['potɛ] and SMG πότε ['potɛ]

#### 4.1.2 /o/ > /u/

Transformation of [o] into [u] found in many Northern Greek varieties happens sometimes in Azov Greek (2a, 24b) but has no parallels in Pontic (37).

37. Rum. ['krijus] ‘cold’ (cf. Lesb. ['krïjus]) vs. Pont. ['krïos] and SMG κρύος ['krïos]

## 4.2 Morphology

Along with numerous similarities (§3.3), morphology of Azov Greek and Pontic varies considerably in some domains including word formation (§4.2.1), nominal morphology and morphosyntax (§§4.2.2–4.2.4) as well as verb morphology (§4.2.5).

### 4.2.1 Word formation

The patterns of word formation discussed here engage different parts of speech and can be ranged into three types:

(a) the Azov Greek pattern coincides with Standard Modern Greek or seems close to it (38).

38. a. Rum. vruſi ‘rain’, cf. SMG βροχη /vro’çi/ vs Pont. vréſi

b. Rum. vérga ‘branch’, cf. SMG βέργα /ˈvɛrγa/ vs. Pont. vɛrγín

(b) the Pontic pattern is the same as in Standard Modern Greek or resembles it (39).

39. a. Rum. mikrútsiks ‘small’ vs. Pont. míkros and SMG μικρός /miˈkros/

b. Rum. maſiríazu ‘slaughter’ vs. Pont. maſeróno cf. SMG μαχαιρώνω /maçeˈrono/
c. Rum. *fsáynu* ‘slaughter’ vs. Pont. *spázo* vs., cf. SMG σφάζω /’sfazo/ < AG σφάζω /’spʰadzɔ/

(c) both Azov Greek and Pontic patterns differ from the one in Standard Modern Greek (40).

40. Rum. *payunúja* ‘ice’ vs. Pont. *páyon* and SMG πάγος /’paɣos/

It is too early to say which of these three types is the most frequent but at first glance type (c)
seems the least frequent.

4.2.2 Core cases mergers for nouns

Case merger for nouns is not a rarity. Even in Ancient Greek and Latin, with their highly developed declension system, neuter nouns had the same flexions for nominative and accusative, and this coincidence is regarded to be an important characteristic of the Indo-European languages.

Following phonetic and morphonological changes, Greek and many of its varieties lost the
difference of feminine endings in nominative and accusative as well. As a result, the article has
become the only clear indication of the case (see Table 3). This situation is also relevant for Pontic
(41).

<table><caption>**Table 3:** Declension of feminine nouns in Standard Modern Greek.</caption>
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th>Case</th>
      <th>SG</th>
      <th>PL</th>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>NOM</td>
      <td>η ὡρ-α /i 'or-a/ 'hour'<br/>&lt;DEF.F.NOM.SG hour-NGen.SG&gt;</td>
      <td>οι ὡρ-ες /i 'or-es/<br/>&lt;DEF.F.NOM.PL hour- NGen.PL&gt;</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>ACC</td>
      <td>την ὡρ-α /tin 'or-a/<br/>&lt;DEF.F.ACC.SG hour- NGen.SG&gt;</td>
      <td>τις ὡρ-ες /tis 'or-es/<br/>&lt;DEF.F.ACC.PL hour- NGen.PL&gt;</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

<table>
  <tr>
    <td>41.</td>
    <td>a.</td>
    <td><b>i</b></td>
    <td><b>mán-a=m</b></td>
    <td><b>kalafév-ø</b></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td></td>
    <td></td>
    <td>DEF.F.NOM.SG</td>
    <td>mother-NGEN.SG=POSS.1SG</td>
    <td>say.IPFV-PRS.3SG</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td></td>
    <td></td>
    <td>'my mother says'</td>
    <td></td>
    <td></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td></td>
    <td>b.</td>
    <td><b>eyó</b></td>
    <td><b>elép-o</b></td>
    <td></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td></td>
    <td></td>
    <td>1SG.NOM</td>
    <td>see.IPFV-PRS.1SG</td>
    <td></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td></td>
    <td></td>
    <td><b>tin</b></td>
    <td><b>mán-a=m</b></td>
    <td></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td></td>
    <td></td>
    <td>DEF.F.ACC.SG</td>
    <td>mother-NGEN.SG=POSS.1SG</td>
    <td></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td></td>
    <td></td>
    <td>'I see my mother' (Kisilier 2025c)</td>
    <td></td>
    <td></td>
  </tr>
</table>
The situation in Azov Greek is more complex: the article in singular is *tu* (or *t* if the next word has initial vowel) and *ta* in plural. Moreover, the article is frequently omitted and thus, nominative and accusative cannot be morphologically distinguished without a broader context, cf. (42a) with “nominative” and (42b) with “accusative” of the word *kilsíja* ‘church’.

42. a. *aíku-ø* **kilsíj-a** *bðína=pa* *f=ítun*
such-NM.SG church-SG nowhere=FOC NEG=be.PST.3
‘[there] was nowhere such a church’

b. **mís** íx-amits áλax méya-ø
1SG.NOM have.PST-PST.1PL very big-NM.SG
kilsíj-a ómurfu-ø
church-SG beautiful-NM.SG
‘we had [a] very big beautiful church’ (Kisilier (ed.) 2009: 410)

### 4.2.3 Nominal possession

The use of genitive is probably the most expected way to express possession in Standard Modern Greek. Pontic belongs to those Greek varieties which still use this case (43).

43. **ti** **sindrof-ónos** to peðí-n
DEF.GEN.SG friend-GEN.SG DEF.N.NGEN.SG child-NGEN.SG
‘[my] friend’s child’ (Kisilier 2025c)

In many Greek varieties, genitive is rapidly disappearing (cf. Mertyris 2014), and Azov Greek has almost lost this case (see also §3.3.2) and in as a consequence deploys other means to express nominal possession like prepositions (44a) and juxtaposition (44b).

44. a. *trof-ø* **s-u** *tráktor-ø*
wheel-SG in-DEF.SG tractor-SG
‘wheel of the tractor’

b. *tát-a=m* *tu* *trayóð-ø*
father-SG=POSS.1SG DEF.SG song-SG
‘my father’s song’ (Viktorova 2009: 205)

### 4.2.4 Doubled article use with adjectives

In Standard Modern Greek, in Noun Phrases displaying an adjective, the article is regularly reduplicated and appears twice: both in front of an adjective and a noun. The position of the adjective within the Noun Phrase seems to be of no importance (45).

<table><tr><td rowspan="3">45.</td><td>a.</td><td><b>το</b></td><td>μεγάλο</td><td><b>το</b></td><td>σπίτι</td></tr><tr><td>/to</td><td>me'yal-o</td><td><b>to</b></td><td>'spit-i/</td></tr><tr><td>DEF.N.NGEN.SG</td><td>big-N.NGEN.SG</td><td>DEF.N.NGEN.SG</td><td>house-NGEN.SG</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="3">b.</td><td><b>το</b></td><td>σπίτι</td><td><b>το</b></td><td>μεγάλο</td></tr><tr><td>/to</td><td>'spit-i</td><td><b>to</b></td><td>me'yal-o/</td></tr><tr><td>DEF.N.NGEN.SG</td><td>house-NGEN.SG</td><td>DEF.N.NGEN.SG</td><td>big-N.NGEN.SG</td></tr><tr><td colspan="6">'the big house' (Kisilier 2025b)</td></tr></table>

Pontic regularly follows the Standard Modern Greek pattern (46).

<table><tr><td rowspan="3">46.</td><td>a.</td><td><b>to</b></td><td>tran-ón</td><td><b>t</b></td><td>ospίτ-ø</td></tr><tr><td>/to</td><td>big-N.NGEN.SG</td><td>DEF.N.NGEN.SG</td><td>house-NGEN.SG</td></tr><tr><td>b.</td><td><b>t</b></td><td>ospίτ-ø</td><td><b>to</b></td><td>tran-ón</td></tr><tr><td colspan="6">'a big house' (Kisilier 2025c)</td></tr></table>

On the contrary, no example with doubled articles can be identified in Azov Greek. This variety rather tends to make no use of any article at all (cf. 42b).

### 4.2.5 Verb inflexion mergers

Along with the case mergers (§4.2.2), different verb forms may also coincide. Standard Modern Greek είναι /'ine/ is a case in point: it can mean both '[s/he/it] is' (PRS.3SG) and '[they] are' (PRS.3PL). Verb inflexion mergers exist in Azov Greek as well (47).
47.

<table><tr><td>mís</td><td>ayóras-am</td><td>miskár-ø</td><td>ci</td></tr><tr><td>1PL.NOM</td><td>buy.PVF-PST.1PL</td><td>calf-SG</td><td>and</td></tr><tr><td>na=tu=páy-um</td><td></td><td>as</td><td>spít-ø</td></tr><tr><td>SBJV=3SG.OBL=go.IPFV-ACT.PRS.1PL/PASS.PRS.1SG</td><td></td><td>in</td><td>house-SG</td></tr><tr><td>na=tu=páy-amits</td><td></td><td>as</td><td>spít-ø</td></tr><tr><td>SBJV=3SG.OBL=go.IPFV-PASS.PRS.1SG</td><td></td><td>in</td><td>house-SG</td></tr></table>

'[we] bought a calf, and [we] shall take it home. [We] shall take it home'
(Kisilier 2009: 378)

The form [na=]páyum may be either 1st person plural in active voice ('[we shall] go'), or 1st person singular in passive voice ('[I shall] be taken'). The latter interpretation could be supported with the passive form of the same verb [na=]páyamits <[SBJV=]go.IPFV.PASS.PRS.1SG>. However, the context (personal pronoun mís 'we' and verb ayórasam '[we] bought') claims for the first interpretation, i.e., '[we shall] go'. In order to minimize possible ambiguities, pro-drop phenomenon in Azov Greek is far more seldom than in other Greek varieties.<fnref n="51" />

In Pontic, we were unable to find any attestation of verb inflexion mergers.

## 4.3 Syntax

Discussing the differences in syntactic domain of Azov Greek and Pontic, we intend to pay attention above all to two phenomena: the order of constituents in clitic doubling (§4.3.1) and modal complementizers (§4.3.2).

### 4.3.1 Order of constituents in clitic doubling

Clitic doubling happens when the object is reduplicated with clitic pronoun and this phenomenon is attested in both varieties analyzed in this chapter. Generative linguistics proposes to distinguish three types of clitic reduplication: clitic doubling, clitic left dislocation and clitic right dislocation (cf. Philippaki-Warburton et al. 2002: 58–59; Tsakali & Anagnostopoulou 2008: 323–328; Gregoromichelaki 2013; Anagnostopoulou 2017: 4–11). However, in practice, when one has to deal

<footnote n="51">⁵¹ The frequency of pro-drop may differ from variety to variety, i.e., from almost compulsory pro-drop in Standard Modern Greek to just possible in Azov Greek. Nevertheless, both can be regarded as pro-drop languages because, according to Joseph (1994: 27), “a pro-drop language is one that is not a NON-pro-drop language”. It is still not clear to what extent pro-drop is obligatory in Pontic. Relying on our data, we suppose that in this regard, Pontic behaves more as Azov Greek than as Standard Modern Greek.</footnote>
just with scarce<fnref n="52" /> and poorly described field-research data, it is next to impossible to understand
clearly the types of clitic reduplication based on the examples at our disposal. For that reason, we
regard the term ‘clitic doubling’ in a broader sense and include all possible cases of clitic right and
left dislocation under this label.

Azov Greek and Pontic demonstrate different orders of constituents of clitic doubling. Azov
Greek displays either Object–Verb–Clitic (48a), or Clitic–Verb–Object (48b), or even Verb–Clitic–
Object (48c).

48. a. sí ména ſ=ayap-ás=mi
2SG.NOM 1SG.OBL NEG=love-PRS.2SG=1SG.OBL
‘you do not love me’ (Borisova 2009: 398)

b. pót na=si=dran-ú séna
when SBJV=2SG.OBL=see.IPFV-PRS.1SG 2SG.OBL
‘when shall [I] see you?’

c. sís meyáln-it=tun atóna
2PL.NOM grow.up.IPFV-PST.2PL=3SG.M.OBL 3SG.M.OBL
‘you have brought him up’ (Borisova 2009: 400)

In Pontic, the only possible order of constituents is Object–Verb–Clitic (49).

49. at-ín tin yar-ín
3-SG.F.ACC DEF.F.ACC.SG woman-ACC.SG
elép-o=ten
see.IPFV-PRS.1SG=3SG.F.ACC
'[I] see [this?] woman' (Kisilier 2025c)

The differences in the order of constituents obviously correlate with restrictions of clitic
position in Verb Phrase (§2.4.1). Thus, in Pontic, a clitic pronoun can never precede the governing

<footnote n="52">⁵² Both in Azov Greek and in Pontic, clitic reduplication is absolutely absent from narratives and can be found only in dialogues. This is why, the researcher should be very lucky to get any occurrence of this phenomenon in this specific context, even if s/he speaks fluently Azov Greek or/and Pontic.</footnote>
verb while in Azov Greek, it can be either in front of the verb or behind it. Nevertheless, we still have more questions than answers. We do not know for now how clitic reduplication in Azov Greek and Pontic is connected with topicalization or focus, or if there are any semantic differences between the different orders of constituents in Azov Greek. Answers to these questions will help us to understand how original the phenomenon of clitic reduplication is in Azov Greek and Pontic, or whether it possibly results from the contacts with other linguistic varieties.

### 4.3.2 Modal complementizers

Azov Greek and Pontic have a modal complementizer, and like most Greek varieties, they use a particle *na* which indicates subjunctive and sometimes future. In Azov Greek, *na* can appear both in main (47), or subordinate (50a) clause while in Pontic, we were able to discover some instances of it only in subordinate (50b).

50. a. γό
1SG.NOM
**na**=pá-js
SBJV=go.PFV-PRS.2SG

fí=θé-l-u
NEG=want-PRS.1SG
**na**=lúfk-is
SBJV=bathe.IPFV-PRS.2SG

'monax-ós
alone-M.NOM.SG

'I do not want [you] to go and bathe alone' (Davydova 2009: 354)

b. eγό
θé-l-o
**na**=féγ-o
1SG.NOM
want-PRS.1SG
SBJV=run.away.PFV-PRS.1SG

'I want to run away' (Kisilier 2025c)

## 5. Results and conclusions

As we could see, Azov Greek and Pontic have much in common. At the same time, multiple particularities do not coincide. Some similarities and differences find their roots in Ancient Greek while others appeared much later due in particular to multiple contacts with other languages.

Classifications of Modern Greek dialects (Newton 1972; Trudgill 2003) have elaborated a set of parameters for comparing Greek varieties. Unfortunately, these parameters are not always helpful. Thus, the fall of unstressed /i/ (3, 24a) and /u/ (24b) does not mean that Pontic belongs or is close to Northern Greek. Another good example is the famous lexical isogloss which distinguishes the varieties according the way they represent the interrogative ‘what’. If we imply this isogloss to Azov Greek and Pontic, no one should even dare to think of grouping them together (see the beginning of
§4). Besides, traditional Modern Greek dialectology, in spite of really interesting attempts by Kontosopoulos (2001: XXIII) and Ralli (2006), does not have any consistent approach to comparison of morphological, morphosyntactic and syntactic features which, as we believe, are important not only for Azov Greek and Pontic but other varieties of Greek as well.

We think that dialectometry offers an opportunity to overcome many restrictions and inconsistencies of traditional dialectology. This approach relies on different techniques in order to quantify the linguistic distance which stands between two (or more) sets of data and by extension between two (or more) varieties of a language. The very notion of linguistic distance encompasses the totality of differences which exist between the varieties, whether they belong to related but different languages or to varieties of the same language. Paul Heggarty (2000: 531) defines it more precisely as “the degree of similarity/difference between any two language varieties”. It is generally expressed as a percentage of resemblance or dissimilarity. As a quantitative approach, it transforms the linguistic material into numbers in order to weigh them and makes their comparison easier, whatever their respective differences are. This method results on an aggregate distance which gives the opportunity not to focus on a selection of specific features but to weight the differences between varieties by comparing available collections (more details in Nerbonne 2009).

Dialectometry itself, as a quantitative dialectological approach, was elaborated by the French linguist Jean Séguy (1973) and expanded by the Austrian scholar Hans Goebel (1982; 1984; 1993; 2006; 2018) until new developments at the beginning of the 21st century driven by new researchers led by John Nerbonne and his colleagues (Wieling & Nerbonne 2015). Following the use of the Levenshtein distance (Levenshtein 1965) initiated by Brett Kessler (1995) for measuring the distance between the varieties of Irish, they refined and developed its use in different works (e.g., Heeringa et al. 2002; Heeringa 2004). As a result, Heeringa et al. (2006) validated the use of the Levenshtein distance as a good indicator of the dialectal structure of a language. More generally, dialectometry makes use of a range of geocomputational tools and statistical analyses in order to investigate corpuses, such as linguistic atlases (cf. Goebel 2010; Heeringa & Prokić 2018).

There were several very promising attempts to employ dialectometric approaches to Asia Minor Greek (Bompolas & Melissaropoulou 2023a; 2023b; Bompolas 2023) although Pontic unfortunately was not actually involved. We also tried to apply to different dialectometric methods (Levenshtein distance and Hamming distance) to seven Greek varieties documented in ABLA (Adamou & Sobolev 2025; cf. fn. 17) in order to define the distances between them using phonetic features of the core vocabulary and some peculiarities of the nominal morphology (Kisilier & Sollicic 2023).
While comparing the data from Azov Greek and Pontic, we realized that the Hamming distance would be the most appropriate tool for our analysis. The Hamming distance allows to make comparisons between segments of identical length according to the following formula (Hamming 1950):<fnref n="53" />

$$d_{ij} = \sum_{k=1}^{p} |x_{ik} - x_{jk}|$$

The Hamming distance measures the edit distance between two strings of equal length i.e., the different values for the features analyzed. Then it calculates the minimum number of substitutions to transform one string into the other. Moreover, it offers the advantage to be able to handle N/A answers when present in some datapoints. Séguy (1973) was one of the very first to use it for obtaining an aggregate distance in linguistics. The results are expressed as a percentage of similarity displaying convergence or divergence between the datasets compared. These distances can later be compared, mapped or computered with clustering algorithms.

We applied this method not just to compare Azov Greek and Pontic using features described in the previous sections of this chapter but we also took into account the data from other Greek linguistic varieties published in ABLA. Our task was not to quantify actual distances between certain varieties but to understand the ratio between these distances at different linguistic levels. The clearest way to show the ratio is to draw a dendrogram where one can see which varieties are closer and which are more distant. The dendrogram in Figure 1 visualizes the similarities and differences in phonetics.

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>Figure 1: Phonetics.</figcaption></figure>

<footnote n="53">⁵³ Actually, today the Hamming distance is not calculated manually but by means of special calculators (cf. Amiri et al. 2018).</footnote>
The dialectometric analysis demonstrates that phonetic differences between Azov Greek and Pontic are not so important. The both varieties belong to one group and seem to be rather far from Standard Modern Greek and only Tsakonian is phonetically a little bit more specific.

On the contrary, morphologically Azov Greek appears to be very close to Tsakonian, and both are closer to Pontic than to Standard Modern Greek (Figure 2).

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2: Morphology.**</figcaption></figure>

The syntax of Azov Greek is also not so close to Pontic as one could have expected (Figure 3). From this point of view, it is the most distant variety from Standard Modern Greek, much more outlying than Tsakonian. The distance between Pontic and Standard Modern Greek is much less remote. As one can see from the dendrogram in Figure 3, Pontic has common syntactic features with both Cypriot (which is closer to Standard Modern Greek) and Tsakonian, but syntactically is rather far from Azov Greek.

<figure><img src="image_6.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 3: Syntax.**</figcaption></figure>
Still, in general,<fnref n="54" /> dialectometric analysis proves that Azov Greek is very closely related to Pontic (Figure 4).

<figure><img src="image_7.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 4:** Overall.</figcaption></figure>

Another question is how to interpret these results. We are not sure that the overall proximity is enough to claim that Azov Greek is a variety of Pontic. We think that dialectometric analysis supports its possible Asia Minor origin, on the one hand, and on the other, reveals important differences which could be caused not only by language contacts<fnref n="55" /> but by discrepancy in the inner dynamics of Azov Greek and Pontic. Moreover, we think that peculiarities in pronominal syntax and in the expression of the interrogative ‘what’ are important distinctive features which alone allow us to regard Azov Greek as a separate variety of Greek (Sergievskiy 1934: 585–586; Beletskiy 1969: 13).<fnref n="56" /> Anyway, a more persuasive conclusion requires involvement the data from Northern Greek (e.g., Lesbian) and Asia Minor Greek (e.g., Cappadocian) and opens the way to further investigations.

## Acknowledgments

Azov Greek could not have been analyzed without the most valuable advice of Georgy A. Animitsa who was not just a native speaker of Azov Greek but also an outstanding connoisseur and collector of local history, literature and culture. We are also very grateful to Arkhontissa Konstantinidou, Viktor Stoforandov and Danil Lonkin for their help with Pontic data.

<footnote n="54">⁵⁴ By “general” we mean calculation of the values from all linguistic features taken into account the dialectometric analysis.</footnote>

<footnote n="55">⁵⁵ At least, direct contacts between Azov Greek and Tsakonian (see Figures 2 and 3) is not something takes for granted or even expects.</footnote>

<footnote n="56">⁵⁶ Both Azov Greek and Pontic long existed in the same or pretty similar linguistic environment. However, it did not lead to convergence of the pronominal syntax regulations and restrictions or to the shift from *ti* to *do/d̃o* and vice versa.</footnote>
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