The effect of Italo-Romance contact on the Greek cluster vy in Corsica and the implications for sound change in Italiot Greek in Southern Italy

Abstract

In this study we describe a change in the phonotactic structure of Corsican or Cargese Greek, involving the historical cluster /vy/, and relate it to contact with local Italo-Romance (Corsican). While the change in Cargese is seen to be very limited in scope, it provides a useful key to a better understanding of a similar but more complex series of changes in Greek dialects spoken in another Italo-Romance contact situation some distance away in Southern Italy. It also shows how a small change leads not to immediate replacement of an earlier structure, but to increased variation over time. We also motivate the change in question to show that it is related to very specific phonotactic and freq..