Intonation of Greek in contact with Turkish: a diachronic study

Asia Minor Greek (AMG) speakers cohabited with Turkish speakers for eight hundred years until the 1923 Lausanne Convention, which forced a two-way mass population exchange between Turkey and Greece and severed their everyday contact. We compare the intonation of the continuation rise tune in the speech of first-generation AMG speakers born in Turkey with three subsequent generations born in Greece. We examine how long contact effects in intonation persist after contact has ceased, through comparison of the f 0 patterns in four generations of AMG speakers with those of their Athenian Greek- and Turkish-speaking contemporaries. The speech of the first-generation of AMG speakers exhibits two patterns in the f 0 curve shape and time alignment of the continuation rises, one Athenian-like and one Turkish-like. Over subsequent generations use of the latter diminishes, while the Athenian pattern becomes more frequent, indicating intergenerational change.