Re: Costanice Phonology Sketch

Jesse wrote:
> The various regional dialects of Koine Greek begin to break up early
> into Hellenic and Byzantine groups. When the Turks sacked
> Constantinople in 1452
Nitpick:   the Turks didn't sack Constantinople until the next
year, in 1453.  It may or may not be helpful to remember this
by knowing that it was the same year the Hundred Years' War
officially ended.

> From this point on the language was heavily
> influence by Spanish. About 150 years later their descendants began to
> emmigrate to South America where, after some oppression and a few
> failed revolutions, they eventually got their own state speaking their
> offshoot of Greek, now called Costanice ( < konstantinike:).
Why didn't this group of people simply become assimilated to
the local culture, as the real Greeks who fled to Italy did?
And why does this Greek change so much from the Renaissance
until now?  In real life, languages that separated even 1000
years ago tend to look very, very similar.  Obviously language
contact is involved here, so things might be different.

I do not mean the following as a criticism of your project, but
something I've never understood about certain historical projects
like this and Brithenig is the idea that the substrate language
(Latin or, here, Greek) would be so influenced by some other language
that it would not just adopt hundreds or thousands of the adstrate's
lexical items, but also adopt its Lautgesetze, too.  To me, unless
special circumstances are involved, it seems more likely that such
a heavy influence would merely kill off the substrate, rather than
change it to look more like the adstrate.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637

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