Project Director:
George Kechagioglou, Professor Emeritus at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Editing researcher:
Angeliki Loudi, PhD in Modern Greek Literature, researcher at the Institute of Modern Greek Studies

The new series of the Institute of Modern Greek Studies “Texts of Modern Greek Literature” is meant as a continuation of the series “Older Texts of Modern Greek Literature” and is also addressed to students, teachers, and the wide readership. It aims to provide handy scolarly editions of Modern Greek literary works written or published for the first time from the last quarter of the 18th century until the end of the interwar period (1940). Priority is given to unpublished works, but also to works known either from non-scolarly older editions or from unsatisfactory modern ones. Each publication is illustrated with relevant pictures, and includes an Introduction, the Text of the work, a Glossary and index of proper names, and an Annex with relevant texts.

The series “Texts of Modern Greek Literature” [TMGL] has already released its first edition:

G. Kechagioglou (ed.), Γεώργιος Λαπάτης (Σταθάς), Ιστορία ερωτική, ήτοι έρωτας σφοδρός ενός νέου, Κωνσταντινοπολίτου... [ George Lapatis (Stathás), A love story; that is an overwhelming love of a young Constantinopolitan man…], 2021 [TMGL 1]

Project Directors:

[2009-2017] Arnold F. van Gemert,  Professor Emeritus at the University of Amsterdam
&
[2009-] George Kechagioglou, Professor Emeritus at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Research team:
Dr. Angeliki Loudi, Researcher

The project involves a new series of publications, based on an idea that Arnold F. Van Gemert, Professor Emeritus at the University of Amsterdam, had. Its implementation began at the end of 2009 with the publication of a small introductory book entitled From the Late Middle Ages to the 18th century. An introduction to Early Modern Greek literary texts. The book was written by George Kechagioglou, Professor Emeritus at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

The project is directed by A. van Gemert and G. Kechagioglou, who are assisted in their work by Dr. Aggeliki Loudi. Artistic, typographic and other practical assistance is provided by George M. Parassoglou, Professor Emeritus at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and George Papanastassiou, Associate Professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

As a first step, the research team plans to republish, or publish for the first time, small and medium-size, mostly folk literary works of the period from the Late Middle Ages (around 12th century onward) to the third quarter of the 18th century (i.e., up until the speeding up in production of works of the so-called Modern Greek Enlightenment). The books are easy to use, they are of the same size (though, of course, their volume/page number varies) and contain the following: an introduction in a few, brief chapters (whose order in each book is not fixed); the text or texts of each work (usually accompanied by its translation); very few interpretative, cultural and philological comments on the text; a small, selective number of references (for potential further study by whoever wishes to do so); and finally, at times, an appendix with supplementary, usually similar, texts. The books do not include a glossary, nor a table of names or indexes etc., but an attempt is made to provide illustrations for the texts.

Whether this publishing acquaintance and familiarization with these works will, at the same time, lead to the enjoyment of these texts and to the formation of a closer bond with the works of Modern Greek literature in its totality does not depend exclusively on the publishers-editors of the books in the series, or its directors at the Institute of Modern Greek Studies, which implements the terms and desires of its founder, Manolis Triandaphyllidis, a tireless researcher and admirer of Modern Greek language and literature. In fact, it also depends on educational policy regulators, teachers, and, above all, the readers of literary works themselves, namely, the pupils, students and the wider public.

Besides the introductory volume by G. Kechagioglou, the following books have already been published in the Earlier Modern Greek Literary Texts series:

A. van Gemert (ed.), Η κακοπαντρεμένη (Ρίμα για τον γέρο και το κορίτσι) [The Happlesly Married Girl (a rhyme about the old man and the girl)], 2010 [EMGLT 1]

C. Luciani (ed.), Ο Κάτης και ο μποντικός [The Cat and the Mice], 2011 [EMGLT 2]

G. Kechagioglou (ed.), Πτωχολέων [Ptocholeon], 2011 [EMGLT 3]

E. Kriaras (ed.), Ανακάλημα της Κωνσταντινόπολης [A Lament for Constantinople], 2012 [EMGLT 4]

S. Stavrakopoulou (ed.), Ο έπαινος των γυναικών [The Praise of Women], 2013 [EMGLT 5]

A. van Gemert & W. Bakker (eds), Μαρίνος Φαλιέρος, Λόγοι διδακτικοί του πατρός προς τον υιόν [Marinos Falieros, Admonitions of a Father to his Son], 2014 [EMGLT 6]

T. Markomichelaki (ed.), Μανόλης Σκλάβος, Της Κρήτης ο χαλασμός [Manolis Sklavos, The Destruction of Crete], 2014 [EMGLT 7]

G. St. Henrich (ed.), Μανόλης Λιμενίτης, Το θανατικόν της Ρόδου [Manolis Limenitis, The Plague of Rhodes], 2015 [EMGLT 8]

A. Vincent (ed.), H Βοσκοπούλα [The Shepherdess], 2016 [EMGLT 9]

V. Panagiotopoulou-Doulavera (ed.), Καταλόγια. Στίχοι περί έρωτος αγάπης [Lyrics. Verses on erotic love], 2017 [EMGLT 10]

S. Stavrakopoulou (ed.), Πανουργίαι υψηλόταται του Μπερτόλδου [The very subtle tricks of Bertoldo], 2018 [EMGLT 11]

C. Luciani (ed.), Πένθος θανάτου [Grieving for death], 2018 [EMGLT 12]

G. Kechagioglou (ed.), Ιμπέριος και Μαργαρόνα [Imperios and Margarona], 2020 [EMGLT 13]

G. Polemis (ed.), Καλλίμαχος και Χρυσορρόη [Kallimachos and Chrysorrhoe], 2021 [EMGLT 14]

Project director:
Th.-S. Pavlidou, professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Project team:
Dr. E. Gialabouki, Researcher
Dr. A. Alvanoudi, Associate

Greek Talk-in-interaction and Conversation Analysis is a research project that aims at:
a) the study of the Greek language from the perspective of Conversation Analysis,
b) the compilation and continuous development of the Corpus of Spoken Greek,
c) the training of researchers in the theory and practice of Conversation Analysis.

Conversation Analysis

Conversation Analysis, whose roots lie in ethnomethodology, focuses on everyday conversation as the locus of the construction of social reality and seeks to capture the 'methods' with which interlocutors themselves produce, utterance by utterance, the systematics of talk in interaction.

The recording of conversational interaction (tape-recording, video-recording) and the detailed representation of sound into writing (transcription) constitute a prerequisite for the study of conversation, and, more generally, of talk-in-interaction. In this way, researchers have at their disposal exactly the same data for analysis that interlocutors have in the production and interpretation of speech. Moreover, the findings of analysis are accessible to the entire scientific community for scrutiny.

For Conversation Analysis, transcription is not a mechanistic procedure (see related software in the market) nor is it restricted to the presentation of content (see print news interviews). On the contrary, the ‘translation’ of sound into writing presupposes theoretical processing and analysis as well as relevant training, and requires multiple 'corrections' by different individuals.

The Corpus of Spoken Greek

The Institute's Corpus of Spoken Greek is part of the Greek Talk-in-interaction and Conversation Analysis research project, directed by professor Th.-S. Pavlidou. It was originally designed for the qualitative analysis of language and linguistic communication, especially from the perspective of Conversation Analysis, which gives it its special features. Part of the Corpus, though, is available online and can be used for quantitative analysis.

Read more...

Events and activities organized within the research project
Greek Talk-in-Interaction and Conversation Analysis

Conferences

• Greek language and spoken communication, September 18th-19th 2014 
• Questions-answers in Greek talk-in-interaction, October 13th-14th, 2016
• Pragmatic particles in (Greek) talk-in-interaction, June 24th-25th, 2019

Visits of experts for cooperation in Thessaloniki 

• Prof. Gene Lerner (UC at Santa Barbara), May 6th-12th, 2012
• Prof. Geoffrey Raymond (UC at Santa Barbara), May 14th-17th, 2017

Doctoral theses completed within the research program 
Greek Talk-in-interaction and Conversation Analysis
(main supervisor: Th.-S. Pavlidou)

Alvanoudi, A. 2013. The Social and Cognitive Dimensions of Grammatical Gender. [in Greek]. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Kapellidi, Ch. 2011. Subjectivity and Self-presentation in Linguistic Interaction. [in Greek]. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Karafoti, E. 2014. Politeness, Impoliteness, and the Face of the Speaker. [in Greek]. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Project Director:

George Kechagioglou, Professor Emeritus at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Research team:
Dr. Angeliki Loudi, Researcher
Konstantinos Tsiganis (PhD Student), Associate

This research project has been running since October 2007. The aim of the project is twofold: firstly, to search for, collect and photocopy all available print editions of dictionaries and glossaries (individual or part of other print editions of texts) which contain language material from Modern Greek literary texts of the period ranging from the late 17th century (that is, after the period covered by the Dictionary of medieval folk Greek literature by E. Kriaras) to the foundation of the Modern Greek state (in the early 1830s); and secondly, to catalogue language material from texts for which no glossaries/dictionaries are available.

 The project's ultimate goal is to create an adequate archive (a lexical data base), which can be used to compile an (initially electronic, then print) interpretative dictionary of Modern Greek literature of the period.

Project director:
Panagiotis Andreou (PhD Student), associate

Project team:
Dr. Nikos Amvrazis, freelancer
Dr. Christina Malingoudi, freelancer
Argyro Mavroudi, freelancer
Dr. Irene Sechidou, freelancer

The strong interest that the Institute has in teaching Greek as a second/foreign language began in 1973 with the publication of the textbook Modern Greek for foreigners and continued unabated in the coming decades by publishing a complete series of textbooks. The most recently published book of this series is the There you go! Workbook, published in 2013 and written by members of the teaching staff of the School of Modern Greek Language of the A.U.TH.

The Institute also collaborates with the Direct Archdiocesan District Office of Education of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. This collaboration began in 2008, in the course of the preparation of the annual Comprehensive Examination in Modern Greek (Checkpoint B) for Regents credits and has continued growing ever since. The Modern Greek Language Curricula (Checkpoint A & B) is the result of this long and extremely productive collaboration. The Curricula are in adherence with the standards of the New York State Education Department for the teaching of foreign languages (New York State Department of Education Syllabus: Modern Languages for Communication).

Renewing its interest in teaching Greek as a second/foreign language, the Institute has set up a project group for the development of new educational materials, taking always into consideration the recent trends in language learning.

Project director:
Christos Tzitzilis, Professor Emeritus at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Project team:
M.  Margariti-Ronga, Assistant Professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Dr. M. Tsolaki, seconded associate
E. Bilali (Phd student), Associate
F. Kılıc, Associate
Dr. P. Albanoudis, freelancer

This research project has been running since 2001, following a recommendation made by Ch. Tzitzilis, professor of Historical and Balkan Linguistics at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Its aim is twofold: on the one hand, to compile and present in a two-volume edition the findings of research into Modern Greek dialectology to date, and on the other, to lay the groundwork for novel scientific thinking, based on more recent data and taking modern linguistic theory into account.

The first volume will be an extensive Introduction and the second one will systematically examine individual dialects and idioms. The second volume, which will be published first, is almost complete. It contains monographs of about 80-100 pages each on the following dialects: Pontic, Crimean-Azophic, Thracian-Bithynian, Cappadocian, the remaining Asia Minor idioms (Livisi, Pharasa, Sille), Cypriot, Tsakonian, Peloponnesian, the dialect of Mani, Megarian-Koumiotic, the dialects of Crete, the Ionian Islands, the Dodecanese and Cyclades, as well as the dialect of Southern Italy and the idioms of Northern Greece. There are also separate, smaller contributions, e.g. on the idioms of Chios and Smyrna.

Each contribution begins with a description of the geographical and historical context within which each dialect evolved, and goes on to present a review of related research to date. As far as the general characteristics of each dialect are concerned, 24 basic phonetic, morphological, syntactic and lexical isoglosses are selected, based on which the dialects are classified and situated in dialectal space. More particular characteristics of each dialect are presented next, and reference is made to their earliest known forms. Finally, the reader is given some idea of intra-dialectal differentiation.

The systematic description of each dialect begins with phonetics and phonology, moves on to morphology, syntax, the lexicon, phraseology, derivation and compounding, and ends with an investigation of each dialect’s relationship with other dialects and languages as well as a review of its present-day state. After a brief reference to any contemporary written production that might exist for each dialect, each contribution is brought to completion with the presentation of annotated dialectal texts and, of course, the relevant references.

The project, however, will not end with the publication of the work, as the Institute feels that it could and ought to contribute, on a more permanent basis, to the development of dialect studies and, more generally, to the development of research interest in Modern Greek dialects. For these reasons, an up-to-date dialectology library was set up, which consists of 700 titles and is constantly enriched. In addition, an archive of articles and reprints has been created, which today is composed of approximately 3500 entries (out of a total of 7000 regarding the history of the Greek language). Finally, an archive of spoken discourse recordings has been compiled, from various regions of the Greek-speaking world, focusing on those where previous research had failed to collect enough data. To this end, field trips have been organized in different areas, from Tsaconia to Bulgaria, in order to obtain new data. As a result, the Institute is now in possession of about 350 hours of recorded material. For the time being, these data cannot be accessed by other researchers, but the possibility of their further utilization will be reviewed in the future.

On the other hand, a second but equally important objective of the project is to create a small nucleus of researchers, who will train in the study of dialects, acquire the tools necessary for their analysis, and contemplate related research methods. This nucleus was first formed at the beginning of the project. Since then, 10 researchers and MA students have undergone this training, and today the team is made up of 6 members who work on the project on a daily basis. Within this context, the Institute is trying to train young researchers and create a team of dialectologists, who will have the opportunity to combine their postgraduate studies (MA and PhD) with useful and constructive work.

The first volume will be an extensive Introduction and the second one will systematically examine individual dialects and idioms. The second volume, which will be published first, is almost complete. It contains monographs of about 80-100 pages each on the following dialects: Pontic, Crimean-Azophic, Thracian-Bithynian, Cappadocian, the remaining Asia Minor idioms (Livisi, Pharasa, Sille), Cypriot, Tsakonian, Peloponnesian, the dialect of Mani, Megarian-Koumiotic, the dialects of Crete, the Ionian Islands, the Dodecanese and Cyclades, as well as the dialect of Southern Italy and the idioms of Northern Greece. There are also separate, smaller contributions, e.g. on the idioms of Chios and Smyrna.

Each contribution begins with a description of the geographical and historical context within which each dialect evolved, and goes on to present a review of related research to date. As far as the general characteristics of each dialect are concerned, 24 basic phonetic, morphological, syntactic and lexical isoglosses are selected, based on which the dialects are classified and situated in dialectal space. More particular characteristics of each dialect are presented next, and reference is made to their earliest known forms. Finally, the reader is given some idea of intra-dialectal differentiation.The systematic description of each dialect begins with phonetics and phonology, moves on to morphology, syntax, the lexicon, phraseology, derivation and compounding, and ends with an investigation of each dialect’s relationship with other dialects and languages as well as a review of its present-day state. After a brief reference to any contemporary written production that might exist for each dialect, each contribution is brought to completion with the presentation of annotated dialectal texts and, of course, the relevant references.

Project director:
George Papanastassiou, Director

Research team:
Kiki Tsalakanidou (PhD Student), Associate

The Bibliography for the Greek language is an information system which allows (simple and advanced) search of bibliographic data concerning the Greek language and its synchronic or diachronic description. It draws upon a data base containing approximately 24.000 titles.

Particular emphasis is placed on the description of the Greek language from the Hellenistic period to the present day, without, however, neglecting data regarding previous historical periods of the language, particularly when these could prove useful to researchers of Modern Greek.

The user can run a search based on the following data: author’s name, title, volume (of journal, collective edition, conference proceedings), year of publication, topic, language. The search results also give the place of publication, the publisher’s name, reviews and other information, e.g. later editions or reprints.

Project Director:
Christos Tzitzilis , Professor Emeritus at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Project team:
Dr. E. Papadamou, Seconded associate 

The Institute of Modern Greek Studies, following the recommendation of Christos Tzitzilis, professor of Historical and Balkan Linguistics at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and editor of the volume entitled Modern Greek dialects, decided in 2007 to prepare and publish a collective volume entitled Ancient Greek dialects, which will be published in English and in Greek simultaneously.

The Institute aims not only to present today, over 55 years after the publication of the now classical work by C. D. Buck entitled The Greek Dialects (1955), the findings of current research in the field of Ancient Greek dialectology, but also to add a new dimension to it; namely, the examination of Ancient Greek and its dialects from the perspective of Medieval and Modern Greek dialects.

Internationally accomplished researchers in the field of Ancient Greek language and literature contribute to this work. The volume (about 800 pages in size), which will be edited by professors Antonin Bartoněk (University of Brno) and Christos Tzitzilis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), is so designed as to include a review of research so far, the historical evolution, the contacts and the classification of Ancient Greek dialects, a comprehensive grammar as well as a thorough description and analysis of individual geographical dialects (e.g. the dialects of Argolida, Arcadia, Achaea, Voiotia, Thessaly etc.) but also the literary dialects and social registers of Greek from antiquity to the Hellenistic period. The volume will also contain an extensive list of references, indicative examples of ancient dialect texts, comprehensive indexes of terms and objects, detailed maps, etc.

In these difficult times for Greek studies abroad, where the number of faculty positions in Greek philology and language (ancient, medieval and modern) is decreasing in foreign universities, this book can trigger a revival of international interest in Ancient Greek and its varieties.