Chantakites: Linguistic analysis

As I promised, I'm going to walk through the linguistic particularities of Manuel Chantakites' letter. This is pretty usual in the philological editions of Early Modern texts: there'll be a couple of pages in the preface enumerating linguistic oddities, working their way up from phonology through to syntax (and not getting far beyond syntax, or a 19th century understanding of linguistics). To Greek speakers this may well be obvious—no edition would go into this much detail. But particularly because of the Cretan dialect involved, I might as well go all the way through.

In the following, CSMG = Contemporary Standard Modern Greek. The sentence references to the text (repeated at the end) are given in brackets.

Phonology: There are a lot of final n's, as was the case throughout transcriptions of Modern Greek until the past century. This does not necessarily mean they were pronounced, or they were not. CSMG has dropped a lot of final n's, although there is still variability and debate about it. But final /n/ is dropped in αν "if" before consonants, where CSMG would retain it (7, 8, 18).

Final euphonic /n/ has extended analogically to infinitives, giving the innovating είσταιν (7) "to be" alongside είσται (9) (Classical εἶσθαι, with the regular vernacular sound change /sθ/ > /st/.)

πίκρα "bitterness", πικραίνω "to embitter" has been metathesised to πρίκα, πρικαίνω (2, 3, 4). That kind of metathesis is common (/#pr/ is easier than /-kr-/); I've even heard αρθιμός for αριθμός. CSMG has done away with these by etymological spelling.

γλήγορος "fast" for γρήγορος < ἐγρήγορος "alert" is common in non-standardised Greek. By contrast, the etymological αδέλφια, αδελφήν "siblings, sister" (13, 14) have not shifted to the Modern αδέρφια, αδερφή.

Clitic pronouns can have euphonic final /e/: τηνε "her" (to avoid final /n/ before a consonant) (2). In CSMG, that is now restricted to song lyrics, but it is still a prominent feature of Cretan.

/evo/ verbs display an epenthetic gamma: γυρεύγεις for γυρεύεις "you seek" (2). This is routine in non-standardised variants of Modern Greek.

Some of the routine aphaeresis of Modern Greek has not happened in this text, although as usual it's hard to know whether that's because the spelling is being archaic, or the change hadn't happened yet. So επρίκανες for πίκρανες "you embittered" (2), εδική for δική "proper" (3), ωσάν for σάν "as, when" (2), οπού for που "relativiser" (3). (But the Modern Cretan for που is απού, so the initial vowel was retained.) OTOH, νοίκια > ενοίκια "rents" (2), και εθάρρουν (4) vs. και θάρρουν (9).

By contrast, the text shows some instances of και "and" with the same initial vowel, οκαί (2, 8, 18). This was a short-lived innovation in Early Modern Greek, and it showed that forms like οπού and που coexisted—so that οκαί::και was remodelled by analogy to οπού::που.

Ancient χρυσοχόος "goldsmith" has been rendered as χρουσοχός (20): the variant χρουσός for χρυσός is entrenched in unstandardised Greek, and the hiatus of /oos/ has been eliminated. CSMG has reintroduced the ancient form.

Morphology: The stressed augment of ήμαθα "I learned" (16), ήκαμες "you did" (9), and ήλεγες "you were saying" (16, 17) are /i/ rather than /e/. The spelling analyses it as a "double augment", which occasionally turns up in Ancient Greek (mostly because the verb had a variant with an initial vowel already.) The /i/ augment has become regular in Modern Eastern Cretan, and this seems to be the start of it; it is still not regular, given έκαμα "I did" (3), έμαθα "I learned" (5). The augment of ήκουσα "I heard" (2) (Ancient ἤκουσα, Modern άκουσα) should be interpreted the same way, rather than as an archaic survival.

έναι (19) for "is" is transitional between ἔνι "is in", which is common in Early Modern Greek and underlies Cypriot έν, and CSMG είναι, which has levelled the stem to the other present tense persons (είμαι, είσαι, είναι).

εθάρρουν "I trusted" (4) retains the ancient imperfect ending, as does Modern Cretan. CSMG uses the Northern Greek ending -ούσα.

The genitive κυρού of κύρης > κύριος "master = father" (21) can be explained through the occasional Byzantine variant κυρός.

The infinitive survives only in restricted roles—here, only in the future construction θέλω + Infinitive (7, 8, 11). This future construction is contrasted with the literal meaning of θέλω "I want", which takes the subjunctive (18, 19).

The future construction of CSMG, θα + Subjunctive, has two antecedents in Early Modern Greek: either Conjugated θέλω + Infinitive Verb, or Infinitive θέλει + Conjugated Subjunctive (θέλω έλθει(ν), θέλει έλθω "I will come"). The CSMG construction comes from the second structure: θέλει έλθω > θέλει να έλθω (with the verb dependency explicitly as a subjunctive) > θε να έλθω > θα έρθω. Modern Cretan retains the first structure, with the main verb preposed: έλθει(ν) θέλω > να έρθει θέλω (with the infinitive reinterpreted as a subjunctive). Chantakites has the earlier infinitival construction, both in normal ordering (θέλω είσταιν "I will be" 7) and with the characteristically Cretan preposing (έλθει θέλω " I will come" 8, εγνωρίσει θέλω "I will know" 10)

The conditional construction, which parallels the future but uses past tenses on the main verb, is also present: ήθελεν είσται "would be" (9).

Lexicon: The letter uses πατέρας for "father" (1, 2, 16): it's the reflex of ancient πατήρ, and the neutral CSMG word. The marginal note to his wife at the end uses the Cretan word κύρης, "lord" (21). That suggests Manuel is being formal and aloof when addressing his father. The same goes for μητέρα "mother" (1) vs. μάννα "mum" (21).

Ξέρω "I know" is in its older form, ηξεύρω (< ἐξεύρω "I find out") (2, 16).

Σώνει "it saves" has the older meaning "it suffices" here (CSMG would used φτάνει) (3).

Θαρρώ "I have courage; I trust" has come to mean "I think, I reckon" in CSMG. The letter illustrates how this may have happened (4): "I have courage in you" > "I trust in you" > "I trust in you to make this happen" > "I trust that this will happen" > "I reckon that this will happen".

καύχα "girlfriend" (9) is no longer in use.

τυχαίνω "happen, happen by accident" (9) is used to mean "be appropriate".

άματα "when" (4) is a variant of άμα "when, as soon as" < ἅμα "together". The -τα suffix occurs with other Early Modern adverbs: αντίκρυ-τα "opposite", δίχωσ-τα "separately", είμη-τα "otherwise", and is an analogy with other adverbs ending in -τα (έπειτα "afterwards", ανεθάρρετα "bravely").

φλογοτομάς (4) is a folk-etymological recast of φλεβοτομάς "you cut your veins" after φλογο- "flame". The emotive context may have influenced this.

μηδέν "nothing" is used for μην "not (subjunctive), lest" (4). This corresponds to the use of ουδέν "nothing" instead of ου "not (indicative)" (9), which has resulted in CSMG δεν "not" (17) by aphaeresis.

CSMG οι δικοί μου "my own ones" means "my relatives"; this expression is already present as τους εδικούς μου όλους "all my relatives" (15). The letter rearranges Det Adj N Poss to Det Adj Poss N for emphasis, as CSMG allows: τους καλούς μου εδικούς και τους καλούς μου φίλους "my good friends and my good relatives" (11). But while CSMG allows τους καλούς μου φίλους, it does not allow *τους καλούς μου δικούς. This shows that οι δικοί μου has since been lexicalised, and the possessive can no longer be separated from the noun.

Dialect lexicon: πολλά is Cretan for πολύ "very" (2, 13, 14); the neuter plural used as an adverb is in fact the regular formation in CSMG (e.g. καλά "well"), and the standard language is archaic in retaining the neuter singular for πολύ.

Κατέχω "I possess" has supplanted ξέρω "I know" in Cretan; both are used here (οκαί κατέχεις καλά "and you know well") (3).

τίβοτας (16) is Cretan for τίποτε "anything"; it has developed in Modern Cretan into τίβοτσι.

τεσταμέντο (19) is of course an Italian loanword; Modern Cretan used the Turkish loanword βασιγιέτι (vasiyet).

χέρα "hand" (20) is the expected reflex of Ancient χείρ; it looks in CSMG like an augmentative (contrasted with χέρι < Ancient diminutive χέριον), but is in fact the normal Cretan word.

Syntax: The surname is treated as an apposition: τον Μανοήλ τον Χαντακίτην, "the Manuel the Chantakites" (1). That is a feature of colloquial Greek to this day, and it shows that First Name–Surname is not treated as a single unit.

Indirect objects appear in the genitive, as is common in southern Greek dialect and CSMG. This extends to full nouns, as in γυρεύγεις της νύφης σου νοίκια "you seek rents [to] your daughter-in-law" (2). While the phrase is still possible in colloquial Greek, it is on the decline: for full nouns the standard language prefers explicit prepositions, in this case γυρεύεις από τη νύφη σου νοίκια "you seek rents from your daughter-in-law". The other instance, πέψε το του κυρού μου και της μάννας μου "send it to my father and mother" (21) sounds less strange in CSMG.

Cretan often uses genitive (= dative) indirect objects where CSMG uses accusative direct objects; this is regarded as an archaism. An instance here is ευχαριστώ σου πολλά (10), "I thank you a lot", where CSMG has σε ευχαριστώ πολύ.

Clitic object pronouns moved from postverbal in Ancient Greek to preverbal in CSMG. There is a cline across Modern dialects as to how prevalent this is, and Cretan allows both placements. This text reflects that: πολλά με επρίκανες "you have embittered me a lot" (2), τούτον σου θυμίζω "I remind you of this" (7), but ευχαριστώ σου πολλά "I thank you a lot" (10).

I've already posted about the strange-looking use of να in ήκουσα να γυρεύγεις της νύφης σου νοίκια "I heard that you were seeking rents from your daughter-in-law" (2), and ήλεγες να εβγάλεις την νύφην σου "you were saying that you would kick your daughter-in-law out" (16).

One of the more distinctive features of this text is the use of και "and" to introduce not just new sentences, but verb complements. Again, this is a colloquial feature of Modern Greek (and other Balkan languages), largely curtailed in the standard, which would use ότι instead. So: κατέχεις καλά και μεγάλην πρίκαν της έκαμα εγώ "you know well that I have embittered her greatly" (3); ήμαθα και ήλεγες "I have learned that you have been saying" (16)

The letter uses the counterfactual conditional construction αν A όχι και (αν) B "if A, no and (if) B" (18), or όχι και (αν) B αμέ αν A "no and (if) B, but if A" (9), meaning "even if A, let alone if B". A is the counterfactual, exaggerated condition; B is the condition that actually applies, and which A exaggerates: "even if she were my whore, let alone my wife", "even if I had thousands of thousands, let alone what little I do have". This not survived into Modern Greek, which uses όχι on its own to introduce the actual condition as a small clause, without its own verb, and uses the explicit contrastive αλλά (ούτε) να "but (not even) that (= if)" to introduce the exaggerated counterfactual. So it is closer to όχι και (αν) B αμέ αν A as in (9):

• ότι όχι και ήτονε γυναίκα μου, αμέ αν ήθελεν είσται καύχα μου (lit. "that no and she were my wife, but if she would be my whore") > όχι γυναίκα μου, αλλά ούτε πουτάνα μου να ήταν (lit. no my wife, but not even my whore if she were"), "even if she were my whore, let alone my wife"
  
• αν έχω χίλιες χιλιάδες δουκάτα, όχι και α δεν έχω τίβοτας > ??αν έχω όχι τίποτα, αλλά και χιλιάδες δουκάτα "If I have not nothing, but thousands of ducats"

Moreover, the Modern expression is explicitly counterfactual, so (18) would in fact be αν είχα όχι τίποτα, αλλά και χιλιάδες δουκάτα, "If I had not nothing..." The older construction is not as fixed. Consistent with the use of αν rather than subjunctive να in the counterfactual, the old expression allows a conditional tense: αν ήθελεν είσται "if she would be", Modern αν θα ήταν, να ήταν.

ωσάν "as" is used anaphorically (5): έκαμες ωσάν ήθελες, "you did as you wanted [to do]". In Modern Greek, σαν cannot be used anaphorically, and όπως "as" would be used instead.

The ancient use of genitive after prepositions survives, possibly still in colloquial use, possibly as a learnèd construction: από χολής μου πολλής "from my great vexation" (8), ο Θεός μετά σας "God with you" (12). But the latter is a translation of the Ancient ὁ Θεὸς μεθ’ ἡμῶν, and contrasts with the modern με την χέραν μου "with my hand" (20), with its truncated Modern form με.

The expected article is omitted before "hands" in καταφιλώ χέρια της και τα πόδια της "I kiss her hands and feet" (14), though it is used before "feet". There's no clear reason for the inconsistency, and I think it a lapse. The omitted article in ωσάν άλλα πράγματα "like (the) other things" (18) is also odd.

The free word order of Και τούτον θέλω το γράμμα "and this _i I want the letter _i" (19) is unusual for Modern Greek.

Archaisms: Very few, and where you'd expect them. The date is in the dative: μηνί Μαγίω = μηνὶ Μαΐῳ "in the month of May" (22). The archaic δέ "but" has redundantly attached itself to όμως "but" (12), and ομοίως "likewise" also looks formulaic. The addressing of the latter has the formal πατέραν and μητέραν, and also the archaic spelling υιόν [ion] instead of γιον [jon] "son" (1)—though we don't have a diplomatic transcription, so we don't know if Manuel would have used a more modern rendering anyway. The reduplicated perfect ανωγεγραμμένος "aforesigned" (20) is formulaic (though contrasted with the dialectal με την χέραν μου "with my hand").

Discourse: The epistolary command ήξευρε ότι "Know (this), that…" is used a couple of times (2, 16). The modern verb does not have an imperative (*Ξέρε ότι), but its subjunctive equivalent can still be used with the same meaning (να ξέρεις ότι, "you should know that…")

(1) Εις τον πατέραν μου και την μητέραν μου πολλά προσκυνήματα από εμέναν τον υιόν σας τον Μανοήλ τον Χαντακίτην.

(2) Ήξευρε, πατέρα, ότι πολλά με επρίκανες, ωσάν ήκουσα να γυρεύγεις της νύφης σου νοίκια και να τηνε πρικάνεις. (3) Και σώνει την η εδική μου πρίκα οπού της έκαμα (οκαί κατέχεις καλά και μεγάλην πρίκαν της έκαμα εγώ). (4) Και εθάρρουν εις εσέναν, άματά ’μουν μιαν φοράν το παιδίν σου και εξενιτεύτηκα, να φλογοτομάς το αίμα σου να ποτίζεις την νύφην σου και ποτέ πρίκαν να μηδέν έχει από σένα. (5) Και εγώ έμαθα ότι έκαμες ωσάν ήθελες. (6) Και δοξάζω τον Θεόν. (7) Και τούτον σου θυμίζω, ότι, α δώσει ο Θεός, γλήγορα θέλω είσταιν αυτού· (8) οκαί, αν εμίσσεψα από χολής μου πολλής, έλθει θέλω, α δώσει ο Θεός. (9) Και θάρρουν ότι όχι και ήτονε γυναίκα μου, αμέ αν ήθελεν είσται καύχα μου, ουδέν ετύχαινεν να κάμεις ωσάν μού ’παν ότι ήκαμες. (10) Και ευχαριστώ σου πολλά. (11) Και, α δώσει ο Θεός να έλθω και εγώ αυτού, εγνωρίσει θέλω τους καλούς μου εδικούς και τους καλούς μου φίλους. (12) Όμως δε ο Θεός μετά σας.

† (13) Όλα μου τα αδέλφια πολλά καταφιλώ. (14) Και το περιπλέον την σπλαχνικήν μου αδελφήν την κερ-Αντωνίαν την Μαρμαράδαιναν πολλά καταφιλώ χέρια της και τα πόδια της. (15) Ομοίως και τους γαμπρούς μου και τους εδικούς μου όλους.

† (16) Ήξευρε, πατέρα, ότι ήμαθα και ήλεγες να εβγάλεις την νύφην σου από τα σπίτια της, α μου έρθει τίβοτας. (17) Κ’ ήλεγες το θέλημά σου. (18) Και εγώ λέγω, οκαί αν έχω χίλιες χιλιάδες δουκάτα, όχι και α δεν έχω τίβοτας, θέλω να είναι όλα εδικά της, τόσο σπίτια, ωσάν άλλα πράγματα. (19) Και τούτον θέλω το γράμμα να έναι τεσταμέντο και ό,τι γράφω να έναι στερεόν.

(20) Εγώ ανωγεγραμμένος Μανουήλ ο χρουσοχός έγραψα με την χέραν μου.

(21) († Τούτον, ωσάν το αναγνώσεις, πέψε το του κυρού μου και της μάννας μου.)

† (22) Εγράφη μηνί Μαγίω εις την πρώτην.

...Read more

Generalised use of να in Early Modern Greek

I've been reluctant to write this post for a couple of reasons:

1. It requires dropping a moderate amount of linguistic science;
   
2. I'm not prepared to do either the research or the bibliographic survey to back it up;
   
3. It's probably already been worked out by the Grammar of Mediaeval Greek people.

If the latter is the case, then it won't be the first time Notis is more up to date than I am. But I'll write, and I'll see who bites.

In a previous post, I mentioned that I'd like to do a detailed linguistic survey of the 1420 letter by Manuel Chantakites, and how its language differs from contemporary standard Greek (and for that matter contemporary Cretan). Readers remarked that the letter was remarkably readable. But there is one feature of the text that, although readable, is emphatically absent from contemporary Greek. It has to do with how να is used.

You can no longer say sentences like this:

• ωσάν ήκουσα να γυρεύγεις της νύφης σου νοίκια, "when I heard that you are asking for rent from your daughter-in-law" (Manuel is not physically present)
  
• ήμαθα και ήλεγες να εβγάλεις την νύφην σου από τα σπίτια της, "I have learned you've been saying that you would kick your daughter-in-law out of her houses"

The phrases would now be:

• σαν άκουσα πως/ότι γυρεύεις από τη νύφη σου νοίκια
  
• έμαθα πως έλεγες πως/ότι θα βγάλεις τη νύφη σου από τα σπίτια της.

I'm going to work through why this is an oddity, and what I think has happened. I am also going to tie it in to another expression which is just as impossible in Modern Greek:

• Τότε να είδες τα βουνά, να είδες και τους κάμπους / να είδες και τα δάσητα, να είδες τας λαγκάδας, "You should have seen the mountains and the prairies! You should have seen the forests and ravines!" (Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds 103-104)

Modern Greek would use after να not the perfective past (the aorist indicative, historically), but the imperfective past (the imperfect indicative, historically):

Τότε να έβλεπες τα βουνά, να έβλεπες και τους κάμπους / να έβλεπες και τα δάση, να έβλεπες τις λαγκάδες

And I'm going to claim these differences are related.

It will take a lot less time to say this if I presuppose you're all linguists, which you're not; I'm going to give the opaque summary here, and the semantics lesson under the fold.

Early Modern Greek να appears to have been used more broadly as a complementiser than its current distribution associated with events and dubitatives, contrary to its purposive etymology and indeed the further restriction on factual complements in Modern Cretan. This may be associated with a temporary generalisation of να to more "indicative" contexts, e.g. as a future marker, and its use with the historical indicative aorist in optative as well as evidential contexts.

Understood? No? Well, let's walk through this.

In Modern Greek, να is the main subjunctive marker; historically it is derived from ἵνα "in order to". να has displaced the Ancient infinitive, so verbs with να appear where Ancient Greek used the subjunctive, the optative, or the infinitive. One of its main functions, just like the infinitive's, is to introduce complements of verbs: phrases that are the objects of verbs. ("I like to watch", Μου αρέσει να κοιτάζω, φιλῶ βλέπειν).

But whereas the Ancient infinitive could introduce a broad range of complements, να is more restricted. Like the English infinitive, it mostly introduces events, things that happen; and unlike a lot of "indirect discourse" Classical infinitives, it does *not* introduce facts or propositions, pieces of knowledge. Those instead are introduced by ότι or πως. (Some complements also have που or και or nothing, but I don't want to get distracted.) So:

• Άρχισα να διαβάζω, "I began to study"
  
• Θέλω να διαβάσει, "I want him to study"
  
• Σε διατάζω να διαβάσεις, "I command you to study"
  
• Λέει πως διαβάζει, "He says he's studying"
  
• Νομίζω πως διαβάζει, "I think he's studying"

In fact, by switching between να and πως, you change whether a fact or an event is involved, and thereby you change the meaning of the verb. Which is pretty common across languages:

• Τον άκουσα να βρίζει, "I heard him swear" (I perceived an event)
  
• Άκουσα πως έβριζε, "I heard that he swore" (I perceived a claim = proposition, and not an event)
  
• Του είπα να διαβάσει, "I told him to study" (I spoke an event—which is reintepreted to: I commanded an event)
  
• Λέω να διαβάσω, "I'm considering studying" (lit. "I say that I should study": I spoke an event I will carry out—which idiomatically means I'm thinking aloud about doing an event, I'm making a commitment)
  
• Ξέρω πως διαβάζω, "I know that I'm studying" (I know a fact)
  
• Ξέρω να διαβάζω, "I know how to study" (I know an event—I know how to make the event happen)

There is an exception in Modern Greek where να can introduce a proposition. That means putting a proposition in a grammatical context which doesn't fit propositions; and the context is expressing doubt about the proposition:

• Πιστεύω πως διαβάζει, "I think that he's studying"
  
• Πιστεύω να διαβάζει, "I *think* that he might be studying"

You can't do that with more certain verbs: ??Ξέρω να διαβάζει, "I know that he might be studying". (Works in English, not in Greek.) And that exception makes sense because of comparable constructions, where the να-clause introduces an inference, rather than a certain fact—i.e., again, a proposition:

• Πρέπει να διαβάσει, "He must study" (an event that must happen)
  
• Πρέπει να διάβασε, "He must have studied" (a proposition that must be true)
  
• Να διαβάζει; "Might he be studying?"

The doubting clauses and the inferences are all tied together by the tenses they allow. Normally, να introduces a present imperfective or present perfective—the historical present subjunctive and aorist subjunctive. It can introduce the present imperfect—the historical imperfect indicative—in contexts much like the English conditional and the Classical optative: wishes, counterfactual conditions, future-in-past:

• Αχ να διάβαζε! "If only he'd study"
  
• Αν διάβαζε, θα πρόκοβε "If he'd study, he'd get ahead"
  
• Μου είπε πως θα διάβαζε "He said he'd study (= was going to study)"

I'm treating the future marker θα as an extension of να: it is derived from θέλω να "I want to" (like English will), and has similar tense restrictions.

The past perfective—the historical aorist indicative—is normally too "indicative" to appear with να. As it turns out, it never appears with events:

• *Άρχισα να διάβασα
  
• *Θέλω να διάβασε
  
• *Σε διατάζω να διάβασες

It only appears with propositions put in doubt, and inferences (which are intrinsically doubtful):

• Πιστεύω να διάβασε, "I think he might have study"
  
• Πρέπει να διάβασε, "He must have studied"
  
• Να διάβασε; "Might he have studied?
  
• Μου είπε πως θα διάβασε "He said that he will have studied (= must have) studied)"

So this is a reinterpretation of να, away from events and into doubtful propositions. We could speculate that the shift of πρέπει "must", from obligation to inference (deontic to epistemic), came first, because it would explain the shift from event to proposition; but the Ancient subjunctive also conveyed this sort of doubt as a main clause. Typically introduced by μη, but then the Modern equivalent is typically introduced by μήπως:

• μὴ ἀγροικότερον ᾖ τὸ ἀληθές εἰπεῖν: μήπως να 'ναι πιο αγροίκο να πούμε την αλήθεια: "it might be too rude to speak the truth"
  
• εἴπωμεν ἢ σιγώμεν; να μιλήσουμε ή να σιωπήσουμε; "should we speak or keep silent?"

So it could also be an inherited pattern. The tense usage though is an innovation: there's nothing in Ancient Greek to suggest using an "indicative" tense here.

The distribution of ότι/πως vs. να in complements—ότι/πως for facts and propositions, να for events—is pretty stable across Greek dialect. I don't know of any instances where να picks up more than doubtful propositions. In Modern Cretan at least, even that exception is rolled back: "He must be studying" is Πρέπει πως διαβάζει, just like Νομίζω πως διαβάζει and Ξέρω πως διαβάζει (I think/I know that he is reading). So in Cretan, the analogy has gone the other way: analogy has switched "must" from events to propositions, and analogy shifts its following complementiser from the event marker to the proposition marker.

And if you're historically minded, you can find justification for the distribution in the etymology of να: its ancestor ἵνα "in order to" introduced events, things you intended to do. The restriction of the past perfective is also neat, and this all suggests a clearcut system in place since the beginning of Early Modern Greek.

The examples at the start of the post (remember?) do not. The verse from the Quadrupeds shows the past perfective used with wishes, where Modern Greek would use the "optative" past imperfective:

• Τότε να είδες τα βουνά, να είδες και τους κάμπους / να είδες και τα δάσητα, να είδες τας λαγκάδας, "You should have seen the mountains and the prairies! You should have seen the forests and ravines!"

But that breaks the neat association between the indicative tense and doubt. The wish it introduces is still a proposition that hasn't happened, but doubt is not the point of a wish, and Modern Greek doesn't make that extension. Which means that the Modern restriction wasn't always in place: Early Modern Greek didn't distinguish between wishes and doubts, both could take a past tense after να, imperfective or perfective.

Chantakites' letter points to another breakdown. I've seen similar breakdowns in the Chronicle of the Morea, with ότι να used where Modern Greek uses just ότι (on which more below); but Chantakites' letter is more persuasive because its Greek really does look more unforced. And what Chantakites does is break down the Modern distinction between perceiving an event, with να, and perceiving a fact (second hand), through πως. Manuel is miles away from Crete, but

• ωσάν ήκουσα να γυρεύγεις της νύφης σου νοίκια, "when I heard that you are asking for rent from your daughter-in-law"

In Modern Greek, you can only use να after "hear" if you're directly perceiving an event: σαν σε άκουσα να γυρεύεις από τη νύφη σου νοίκια, "when I heard you ask(ing) for rent from your daughter-in-law". And you'd have to insert the direct object, σε "you": the syntax of the dependent clause is different, its subject is raised to become the object of the main verb, expressing perception ("I heard him ask" = "I heard the event in which he asked", "I heard him while he was asking"). Whereas what Chantakites said treats να just like ότι, with no raising of the subject.

What's going on? I think there's a hint in the other instance:

• ήμαθα και ήλεγες να εβγάλεις την νύφην σου από τα σπίτια της, "I have learned you've been saying that you would kick your daughter-in-law out of her houses"

The letter has some instances of what was to become the Modern Greek future construction, εγνωρίσει θέλω "to know I want" > θέλω να γνωρίσω "I want to know" > θα γνωρίσω "I will know" (and Modern Cretan να γνωρίσει θέλω). But that was the start of the future construction: until then in Early Modern Greek, as I've mentioned in earlier posts, the future was expressed with να.

• Michael Glycas: ὁ βασιλεὺς φιλάνθρωπος καὶ νὰ σὲ συμπαθήσῃ, "the kindly emperor's gonna pardon you"
  
• Continuators of Scylitzes: Ἐγὼ σὲ ἔκτισα, φοῦρνε, καὶ ἐγὼ νὰ σὲ χαλάσω, "I built you, oven, and I'll destroy you."

You might argue this construction is still there in Chantakites:

• Και εθάρρουν εις εσέναν … να φλογοτομάς το αίμα, "I trusted in you even to bleed your own veins" ("I trusted in you that you would bleed your own veins"?)

And you can also read the other instance of an odd να that way:

• ήμαθα και ήλεγες να εβγάλεις την νύφην σου από τα σπίτια της, "I have learned you've been saying that you would kick your daughter-in-law out of her houses"

This could be like the idiomatic Λέω να διαβάσω Modern construction: "I'm saying for me to read = I'm thinking aloud that I should read = I'm considering reading." Sounds odd to use it outside the first person, but it's possible. But it's likelier that this use of ήλεγες is literal: Manuel has heard reports of his father speaking, and να introduces what he was speaking, as a proposition rather than a figurative event: it is equivalent to Modern έλεγες πως, "you have been saying that…".

The Modern Greek would continue: έλεγες πως θα βγάλεις τη νύφη σου, "you have been saying that you will kick out your daughter-in-law". With a future tense construction. But θα βγάλεις used to be να εβγάλεις, with the old future use of να. So in 1100, this would have been: έλεγες ότι να εβγάλεις τη νύφη σου—with the ότι να combination you can see in the Chronicle of Morea:

• Ἐνταῦτα ἀπήρασιν βουλὴν ὅ<τι> νὰ ἀπελθοῦσιν, "there they made the decision to depart" (H 145)
  
• Κι ἀφότου ἐστερεώσασιν ὅτι νὰ τὸ πληρώσουν, "and after they affirmed that they would pay for it" (H 180)
  
• ὑπόσχεσιν τοῦ ἐποῖκαν / ὅτι νὰ βάλουσιν βουλήν, "they made him a promise that they would decide" (H 8546–7)
  
• (Jean de Catavas): Κι ὅποιος ἰδῇ ὅτι νὰ τραπῶ ἢ τίποτε δειλιάσω, / ἐχτρὸν τὸν ἔχω τοῦ Χριστοῦ, νὰ μὴ μὲ σφάξῃ εὐθέως, "and whoever sees that I turn or lose courage at all, I shall hold him to be an enemy of Christ if he does not kill me immediately" (H 4755–6)
  
• Τὸ ἀκούσει ὁ Ροῦσος ντὲ Σουλῆ ὅτι νὰ γένῃ ὅρκος, "when Rousseau de Sully heard that there would be an oath" (H 7927)

The first three phrases can be expressed in Modern Greek as either ότι θα, a future proposition, or να, an event (commitment): you can decide that you will do something, or decide to do something. If it's an event, ότι looks redundant: "they made the decision that to depart" (Modern πήραν απόφαση να αποχωρήσουν). That kind of redundancy can happen in Early Modern Greek, but I'm sympathetic to reading it instead as the old future: "they made the decision that they will depart" (Modern πήραν απόφαση ότι θα αποχωρήσουν).

The last two instances are verbs of perception, just as we saw with Manuel Chantakites hearing that his father was seeking rent. De Catavas' clause involves direct perception: Modern Greek allows both να and ότι, and would prefer να normally; but the absence of raising ("sees me turn", μὲ ἰδῇ (ὅτι) νὰ τραπῶ) suggests that the clause is really being introduced by ότι, and να is a future marker. The future sense is clearer in Rousseau de Sully's clause, which involves indirect perception: de Sully can't hear people making an oath, because he is agreeing for them all to take the oath that has just been proposed. So he really has heard "that there will be an oath", and that's what the Greek says: ὅτι νὰ γένῃ ὅρκος, Modern ότι θα γίνει όρκος.

Now the point of all that was, it is difficult to work out whether these clauses express events or propositions: the future να turns up with propositions, and makes them sound like events. The sequence ότι να sounds like two complementisers next to each other, and it would be easy to drop the first as redundant, or as a zero-complentiser. (Είπε πως θα παει "He said that he would go", Είπε θα πάει "He said he would go", which in Early Modern Greek would be Είπε να υπάγει.)

If it's difficult for us, it was difficult back then too. So it would be possible for the future (ότι) να in those contexts to be reanalysed as a propositional complementiser: Τὸ ἀκούσει ὁ Ροῦσος ντὲ Σουλῆ ὅτι νὰ γένῃ ὅρκος, "when Rousseau de Sully heard that there would be an oath" could lead to ωσάν ήκουσα να γυρεύγεις της νύφης σου νοίκια, "when I heard that you are asking for rent from your daughter-in-law". The reanalysis may not have generalised, and it certainly hasn't left any traces behind—especially given how Cretan has since got rid of the propositional να in Πρέπει πως διαβάζει, "He must be studying".

But it suggests that the distribution of να as a complementiser was messier, messed up by the use of να as a future marker—which pushed it towards more "indicative" meanings. The neater modern distribution of να, along with the neater distribution of past tenses after inferential να, may have have resulted from a subsequent cleanup of the language—speakers reimposing order on their use of να, rather than inheriting it.

Thank you if you've made it this far; this is properly a paper, but I'm not likely to write it, and it may already be a solved problem. I'm pretty sure it hadn't been worked through in the literature I read for my thesis. But given the spasmodic status of Early Modern Greek linguistics until fairly recently, that's not saying much.
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Manuel Chantakites, Away from Crete, 1420

Rather than continue from the previous post by presenting the theoretical framework of documentary texts, I will instead give a sample of that kind of text. This is one of the absurdly few private letters we have in the vernacular from the Early Modern period. It's such a rare thing, Kriaras' online dictionary abbreviates it as just Γράμμα κρ. διαλ., "letter in Cr(etan) dial(ect)", with no risk of ambiguity.

The letter has survived through a fluke of history. The State Archives of Venice, "Duke of Candia" (= Crete) section, include a few documents copied for the benefit of Cretans, anxious to have the colonial power's backup for their legal claims. Most of them are dry contracts, and most of those are in Latin: there are several published collections of notary documents in Cretan dialect, but they are all from the 16th and 17th century.

In this instance, we have something different. The widow of Manuel Chantakites, goldsmith of Chandax (= Iraklion), asked for this letter to be notarised and entered into the Venetian archives on March 15, 1446. The letter was from her husband, who had been forced to abandon her and leave Crete. Manuel wrote his letter to be used as a will, because of the dispute over their houses with his father. From the parenthetical note at the end, we know he wanted his wife as much as his father to read the letter. His wife already had witnesses authenticate the letter in December 1420, so we can surmise the letter was sent earlier that year, or maybe a year or so before.

This was the only will the widow had from Manuel, which suggests he never did come back. Given the extraordinary step of having a private letter witnessed in Iraklion and copied in Venice, she clearly continued to be at odds with her in-laws.

As a human interest story, the letter is rich stuff. Manuel admits to abandoning his wife unwillingly: the letter's editor, Manousakas, suspects he had committed homicide. The Kriaras dictonary calls him 'Manuel "Chantakites"', because "Chantakites" just means "from Chandax"; so Manuel was not necessarily using his surname. The letter itself has a potent mix of indignation, threats, and affection. (The sarcasm was potent enough that I contemplated using the irony mark; but this is a 1420 letter, not a 2010 instant message, so that would be a distraction.) I'll let the letter stand on its own, though in a follow-up I'm going to comment on its language extensively.

The vernacular is unusually clean for the period—although Crete was always less macaronic about its Greek writing than the mainland was. There's only one errant δέ "but" in the end of the first paragraph. The author is literate, but not a scholar (like the other vernacular letter writer of the time, Cardinal Bessarion). To be literate meant you were exposed to learnèd Greek, and your writing would reflect that; but given that caveat, this letter is as good as we're going to get as linguistic evidence, without the conscious manipulation of language that characterises literature (vernacular no less than learnèd).

Maybe Machairas' chronicle is a better witness still, come to think of it, simply because there's more of it. But that's Cypriot dialect, and an entirely different post.

I'm reproducing the text from Manousakas' 1962 edition—which appeared in the kind of occasional publication that has guaranteed most copies in existence are photocopies. I've put the text in monotonic, because it's straightforwardly Modern Greek. (I've already posted about the debate over accentuation of editions.) I've respelled the orthographic subjunctives as contemporary indicatives—not because I have any particular enthusiasm for doing so, but to preempt TAK saying I should have. :-) (Manousakas already spells the subjunctives without iota subscript anyway, so he was just using the Modern Greek spelling of his time.)

[Manousakas, M.I. 1962. Ένα παλιό (1420;) ιδιωτικό γράμμα σε κρητική διάλεκτο: Τα παράπονα του ξενιτεμένου Μανουήλ Χαντακίτη για την απονιά του πατέρα του. Kρητική Πρωτοχρονιά 2. 35-39.]

Archivo di Stato di Venezia—Duca di Candia 11: Atti antichi 2, volume 25 bis (1443–1456) folio 3, p. 21v.

† Εις τον πατέραν μου και την μητέραν μου πολλά προσκυνήματα από εμέναν τον υιόν σας τον Μανοήλ τον Χαντακίτην.

Ήξευρε, πατέρα, ότι πολλά με επρίκανες, ωσάν ήκουσα να γυρεύγεις της νύφης σου νοίκια και να τηνε πρικάνεις. Και σώνει την η εδική μου πρίκα οπού της έκαμα (οκαί κατέχεις καλά και μεγάλην πρίκαν της έκαμα εγώ). Και εθάρρουν εις εσέναν, άματά ’μουν μιαν φοράν το παιδίν σου και εξενιτεύτηκα, να φλογοτομάς το αίμα σου να ποτίζεις την νύφην σου και ποτέ πρίκαν να μηδέν έχει από σένα. Και εγώ έμαθα ότι έκαμες ωσάν ήθελες. Και δοξάζω τον Θεόν. Και τούτον σου θυμίζω, ότι, α δώσει ο Θεός, γλήγορα θέλω είσταιν αυτού· οκαί, αν εμίσσεψα από χολής μου πολλής, έλθει θέλω, α δώσει ο Θεός. Και θάρρουν ότι όχι και ήτονε γυναίκα μου, αμέ αν ήθελεν είσται καύχα μου, ουδέν ετύχαινεν να κάμεις ωσάν μού ’παν ότι ήκαμες. Και ευχαριστώ σου πολλά. Και, α δώσει ο Θεός να έλθω και εγώ αυτού, εγνωρίσει θέλω τους καλούς μου εδικούς και τους καλούς μου φίλους. Όμως δε ο Θεός μετά σας.

† Όλα μου τα αδέλφια πολλά καταφιλώ. Και το περιπλέον την σπλαχνικήν μου αδελφήν την κερ-Αντωνίαν την Μαρμαράδαιναν πολλά καταφιλώ χέρια της και τα πόδια της. Ομοίως και τους γαμπρούς μου και τους εδικούς μου όλους.

† Ήξευρε, πατέρα, ότι ήμαθα και ήλεγες να εβγάλεις την νύφην σου από τα σπίτια της, α μου έρθει τίβοτας. Κ’ ήλεγες το θέλημά σου. Και εγώ λέγω, οκαί αν έχω χίλιες χιλιάδες δουκάτα, όχι και α δεν έχω τίβοτας, θέλω να είναι όλα εδικά της, τόσο σπίτια, ωσάν άλλα πράγματα. Και τούτον θέλω το γράμμα να έναι τεσταμέντο και ό,τι γράφω να έναι στερεόν.

Εγώ ανωγεγραμμένος Μανουήλ ο χρουσοχός έγραψα με την χέραν μου.

(† Τούτον, ωσάν το αναγνώσεις, πέψε το του κυρού μου και της μάννας μου.)

† Εγράφη μηνί Μαγίω εις την πρώτην.


To my father and my mother, many obeisances from me, your son Manuel Chantakites.

Know this, father, that you grieved me a lot, when I heard that you are asking for rent from your daughter-in-law, and are grieving her. And the grief I've given her was quite enough. (And you know well that I have given her much grief.) And since I was after all your child and have gone away, I trusted in you even to bleed your own veins for your daughter-in-law to drink, and that she should never have grief from you. And I have learned that you have done as you willed. And I give thanks to God. And I remind you of this: that, should God grant it, I will be back there soon; and though I have gone away with much bitterness, I will indeed be back, should God grant it. And I trusted that, never mind if she were my wife, not even if she were my whore should she deserve for you to have done what they've told me you've done. And I thank you a lot. And should God grant that I will come back—I shall know my true relatives and my true friends. But God be with you all.

Many kisses to all my siblings. And especially my dear sister Lady Antonia Marmaras, I kiss her hands and feet. The same goes for my brothers-in-law and all my relatives.

Know this, father, that I have learned you've been saying that you would kick your daughter-in-law out of her houses, if anything should happen to me. And you have been speaking your will. And I say that, even if I had thousands of thousands of ducats, never mind the nothing that I do have, I want it all to be hers, the houses as much as the other things. And I want this letter to be a will, and whatever I write to be fixed.

I the above-signed Manuel the goldsmith have written this with my own hand.

(When you have read this, send it to my mum and dad.)

Written on the first of the month of May.

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TLG updates

The TLG has just released a new update to its corpus. As of tonight, the automatic recognition of lemmata in the TLG which I've been working on has just reached 95% of all wordforms. With these two milestones, I'll be posting a few things about the current corpus; I've already put up some Wordles, as you will have seen.

First, about the new texts.

• Early Modern Greek is well represented in the update. Readers of this blog will have noticed as much, because I've spent some time dealing with the peculiarities of those texts. Romances are the genre that attracts the most scholarly interest—they make the most sense as literature to contemporary readers. Accordingly, this update includes redaction α of Livistros and Rodamni as recently published by Panagiotis Agapitos of U Cyprus (who also writes Byzantine detective novels); the War of Troy (on which I've already posted); and the four redactions of the Tale of Belisarius.
  
• Jumping forward a couple of centuries, the update also includes Cretan Renaissance drama: George Chortatzes' tragedy Erophile, and the intermedios from Erophile, retelling Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered.
  1595 isn't the latest date of TLG texts; the Chapbook of Alexander the Great (h/t Diver of Sinks) was published in 1750, and while the collections of monastic documents are normally late Byzantine and Ottoman, one collection goes up to 1968. But Chortatzes is the first representative of Cretan dialect, and I was quite happy to tweak the lemmatiser to accomodate it.
  I'll pause to note something which shouldn't be an oddity, but is. Chortatzes writes his stage directions in the same Cretan dialect as his dialogue. Of course he would; our stage directions are in the same language as the rest of the text. But now that there is a Standard Greek, and Cretan isn't it, that comes across as quizzical. If anyone now writes drama in dialect (not Cretan, but possibly Pontic, and certainly Cypriot), the metalanguage of the drama is going to be Standard Greek.
  That's because the metalanguage is the dramatist's own voice; and while hillbilly dialect might be good enough for the dramatists' characters, it will not do for their own directions. I'd imagine it's the same for other Dachsprache languages (language variants under the "roof" of a prestige language), like say German or Italian dialect.
  
• A few texts are recent re-editions. Moeris' Atticist dictionary has been updated. By telling us which colloquial forms not to use, Moeris and the other Atticists (Phrynichus is the main one) tell us a lot about what their colloquial language actually looked like.
  There is also a new edition of Cyril of Alexandria's Paschal Letters, and Eudocia's Homeric Centos. The centos are rearrangements of verses from an old poem, to tell a new story—in this case, Homer rearranged into an account of the Passion of Christ. This sounds like a very postmodern thing to do. But then again, there's nothing new in postmodernism, apart from its bankruptcy of an intellectual programme, as it magpies any flotsam that gets it out of having to tell a story.
  Not that you need to hear about my cultural conservatism.
  
• The TLG also has an updated edition of the fragments of John of Antioch. There has been a controversy about whether the fragments attributed to John belong to one or two authors (there are two different linguistic registers in what we have); as a result, we're in the odd situation by Classical standards of having two new editions of the author, within three years, from the same publisher: Roberto 2005 and Mariev 2008. (The Bryn Mawr Classical Review gives context in its review of Mariev.) The TLG has gone with Roberto, which considers both registers to belong to the same author; that has the added advantage of not throwing half the fragments out of the corpus.
  
• In gathering up bits left out from Middle Byzantine authors, the update also includes Michael Psellus' commentary on Aristotle's Physics, and Constantine Manasses' Moral Poem.
  
• Finally, the update includes the irascible John Tzetzes' retelling of the Theogony.
  We already have the original Theogony from Hesiod; so Tzetzes' retelling might have some interest for cultural history, but is not telling us much we don't already know. Tzetzes' retelling has attracted attention for different reasons. Tzetzes was Georgian on his mother's side; and he sees fit to show off his command of foreign languages, in the epilogue to his poem. That makes his Theogony the earliest attestation of Ossetian. (And in his loose Greek translation, as linked, it may well be one of the first attestations of Greek μουνίν: er, "pudendum muliebre".)

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The phonology of "Sitia"

No hyperlinks for this post, as my internet time is rationed while I'm on holidays.

Sitia, which is my hometown in Crete, does not figure prominently in history. The guidebooks say that in antiquity it was Eteia, and gave birth to Myson, one of the Seven Sages of Antiquity. The only Sage out of the set anyone's heard of is Solon, and the Seven Sages were some sort of mythic convenience anyway, so that doesn't count.

Sitia does turn up in the Middle Ages, with its S. It turns up in the Notitiae Episcopatum, the lists of bishoprics of the Empire. The lists went through a dozen generations, and were increasing garbled and fictionalised, as more and more of the sees they listed had not seen a Christian clergyman in centuries. The lists lived on in the West, and were used to generate the titular sees of the Catholic church: a way of granting someone a bishop's title without a bishop's responsibilities (unless they were minded to go over and convert Nisibis back to the True Faith).

Because the Catholic lists are available on the Intertubes, and the Orthodox lists are on dead tree I don't have, the Catholic lists have often come to my rescue when I was adding placenames to the TLG lemmatiser. Particularly as the Catholic lists include the Latin nominative, while the Greek lists stop at the morphologically ambiguous genitive. So the Latin gave me as good a guess as any as to the gender of the towns listed.

Sitia turns out in two Notitiae, as Σιτία and Σιτεία. I don't have dates on the Notitiae, since I don't have the dead tree full text.

There are other mentions of Sitia here and there, some Byzantine, some Venetian, few Ottoman (the town was abandoned from the Ottoman conquest until around 1870). But the mention I'm going to dwell on is from around 1460; and I'm going to dwell on it because it has an oddity of historical phonology.

First, the phonology that the oddity perturbs. In Cretan, /t/ is lenited to /θ/ before [j]. So the plural of [ˈmati] in Standard Greek is [ˈmatja] "eyes" (from Ancient ὀμμάτια); in Crete it's [ˈmaθja]. "Fire" is [foˈtja] in Standard Greek, and [foˈθja] in Crete. The singular of "eye" is still [ˈmati] thoughː the rule only applies when /i/ is not a syllable—that is, when it precedes another vowel. The rule is general enough for Cretan songsmiths to have taken advantage ofː

Δεν εκυνήγα λαγούς κ' ελάφια
μόν' εκυνήγα δυο μαύρα μάθια.

ðen etʃiniɣa laɣus tʃ elafja
mon etʃiniɣa ðjo mavra maθja

He would not hunt for hares and deer;
he'd rather hunt for two brown eyes.

This particular song has travelled far; it's travelled as far as Mani, and from there to Corsica, without the phonetic rule that /t/ goes to /θ/. So when Maniats sing it, not only does [elafja] not fully rhyme with [maθja], it doesn't even partially rhyme with [matja].

The song has travelled even further than Corsica: it's made it all the way to the eastern tip of Crete, Sitia, which is the only part of the island that the rule does not apply. I heard the song several times while I lived in Sitia; I never heard the song rhyme, because the singers would sing it the way they spoke the dialect, and not the way the other seven eighths of the island did.

The name of the town, like I said, is Sitia, [si.ˈti.a]. The name has [i] as a separate syllable from the following [a], and that should tell you it is not a colloquial form: the vernacular rule is that [i] before a vowel goes to [j], and if it doesn't, the form isn't vernacular. That's why the word for fire is [foˈtja], though it used to be [foˈti.a]. That's why άδεια is pronounced two ways, without the spelling telling you which: [ˈa.ðja] for the colloquial adjective "empty", [ˈa.ði.a] for the learnèd noun "leave, day off" (which is, literally, an empty day). The word for Turkey is now Τουρκία [tur.ˈki.a]; but folksong and previous centuries knew the Ottoman Empire as [tur.ˈkja] > [tur.ˈca], Τουρκιά.

Which means the town should have ended up called [siˈtja], and anyone from outside the town should have ended up calling it [siˈθja], just as they say [foˈθja].

That's not what's happened. The Renaissance poet Vincenzo Cornaro was from Sitia: the most renowned son of the city until contemporary Greek pop sensation Giorgos Mazonakis. And in the epilogue to his great romance Erotokritos, he introduces himself, and his home town:

Βιτσέντζος είναι ο ποιητής, και στη γενιά Κορνάρος,
που να βρεθεί ακριμάτιστος όντε τον πάρει ο Χάρος.
Στη Στείαν εγεννήθηκε, στη Στείαν ενεθράφη,
εκεί 'κανε κι εκόπιασε ετούτα που σας γράφει.

The poet is Vincent, of Cornaro stock:
may he be sinless when he's Death's to take.
In S'tia was he born, in S'tia bred;
there did he write and labour what you've read.

So the town did not end up as [siˈtja], but as [ˈsti.a]. Cornaro's quite careful about hiatus in his verse: vernacular verse avoids two consecutive vowels in separate syllables, just as the vernacular phonology did. In fact, he made a point of nativising Classical loanwords like περικεφαλαία [pe.ri.ke.fa.ˈle.a] "helmet" to the more vernacular-sounding περικεφαλιά [pe.ri.ke.fa.ˈʎa]. So if Cornaro is writing [ˈsti.a] (and we know the syllable count because of the metre), then that's what the place was called in the vernacular.

As indeed it is called by the locals to this day: the town is Στεία, the adjective is Στειακός. The surrounding villages preferred to call it Το Λιμάνι, "the harbour", because it's where their produce ended up. And the local name S'tia still has that non-vernacular hiatus in it. It isn't supposed to: the Ancient word for hearth, ἑστία [hestía], has ended up in other Modern dialects as their word for fire, στιά [stja], and phonologically that should be the same as S'tia: the reduction to one syllable should not have made a difference.

So the town name is more archaic than it's supposed be. But that's not in fact the conundrum I'm leading to. The conundrum I'm leading to is how the town gets named by Michael Apostolius.

You will occasionally, in accounts of Greek lexicography, come across plans to span all of Ancient Greek literature from Homer to Apostolius. Michael Apostolius (or Apostolis, the more vernacular form he used himself), was one of the many scholars who fled Constantinople after its Fall to the Ottomans. Greek was written before Michael Apostolius, and Greek was written after Michael Apostolius; but even though much of that Greek strove for compatibility with the Ancient norms, it has usually been beneath the notice of Classicists.

Apostolius marks an endpoint for Classicists, not because he wrote any Greek himself that they care about, but because he was the last Byzantine editor of a text they care about. There are three major collections of Ancient Greek proverbs: Diogenian's and Zenobius' from Roman times, and Apostolius', who fills in some of their gaps. So lexicographers need to go through Apostolius' proverbs, just as they need to go through the scholia to Ancient texts—the latest of which were written not long before Apostolius: to get as complete a picture of antiquity as can be recovered from the Byzantines.

So there's one text by Apostolius that Classicists care about. There's another text that less people care about: a collection of his correspondence. The collection was edited in 1888 by a scholar called Hippolyte Noiret, who died in his twenties before he could see it in print. I sighted a copy at the ANU library when I was there, looking somewhat forlorn; but it has also been added to the TLG.

I haven't got around to reading the preface to Noiret's edition entirely, but I was amused to read Noiret found Apostolius to be childish, both in his energy and his impetuousness. Whereas other Greek scholars ended up in Italy, taking up jobs at universities or printing presses, Apostolius ended up in a lower-rent version of Italy: Crete, which had been a Venetian colony the past two hundred years. Apostolius was always struggling to make ends meet as a scholar for hire, but he did travel widely through the island, and report back to his many correspondents. And one of the places he mentions is Sithia.

Seeing Σιθία in print took me by surprise. Was this supposed to be Σητεία? Noiret doesn't address the question, and I wouldn't have expected an answer from Google; but Google does now index old journals, even if the publisher is only making the back issues available through institutional subscriptions; and a snippet of a Byzantinische Zeitschrift article from the 1950s looks like confirming that yes, Σιθία is the town in the North-East of Crete.

There's further confirmation from one of the letters where Sithia is brought up: the person carrying the letter was seeking to be appointed bishop of Sithia, and Apostolius trusts that his correspondent will help the letter-carrier in his efforts:

XCII: To the admirable Bessarion.

Since I am in receipt, wisest of cardinals, I have reported to you in the last writing, which three pious peasant priests have brought, that without your generous and gratifying contribution, namely the benefaction of twenty gold coins, I have no other income from any other source—as I am currently feeding five people, and now moreover another newborn child by the name of Aristobulus, whose father I have been called literally; and I now have an heir not in money, but in family. And if I ever happen to broach the topic of the scarceness of children (?) , I also owe some rent; the priests are my witnesses as to whether I speak the truth. Therefore, bearing in mind how I will turn out in my old age, and whence I will have resources to marry off my dearest children, I pray to you, prudent and generous, and would exact from you advice as to what I should do: whether I should come there and serve you with the others, or whether I should allow myself the solution of inquiring about Germany and England, and the surrounding districts as well, in the manner about which I shall come and kneel before your lordship and report to you.

But so much for that; and as I am friend to God, so may I be as well to you, my lord. Now, the one bearing this letter is a Cretan from good Cretan parents, who has lived saintly and justly. And being thus worthy of priesthood, he has kept company as if born and reared, first with a certain holy bishop of the Gortynians, then after a short time with the bishop of Cydonia as well—who was your attendant and who has also followed you in Venice and elsewhere. Being such and born of such, it is necessary—for you and many others, and through myself—that he become bishop of Sithia. He is who all Sithians want, and seek as their bishop because of the impeccability of his life, and because he is their family and familiar to them. For he too is Sithian, born and reared and living there. If you should help this man (and I hope you will help him promptly, emulating your innate generosity in this matter too), then you shall do what is pleasing to God, and natural to your forebears, aiding the poor and the good; and what is hoped for and dear to the Sithians. And you shall show me too to be good, a pauper helping a pauper, submitting myself to reciprocity.

If Sithia is a town in Crete big enough to have a bishop, and Sitia was already known from the Notititae to have a bishop, that does narrow things down a lot. It narrows the timeframe too: Sitia no longer has its own bishop, and is under the authority of Hieraptyna (now Ierapetra, "Holy Rock", through folk etymology, and in the local pronunciation [ʝeˈrapetra]). That may be because Sitia was depopulated for a couple of centuries; dunno.

And if the letter was written in the 1460s, that's not a Greek Orthodox bishop's position he's talking about either. The lobbying needs to happen in Italy, because Venetian Crete had Catholic bishops; the Orthodox islanders had to look to Modon (Methoni) for their spiritual guidance. Apostolius was Catholic himself, and several of his letters are about how to combat the schismatic Orthodox on their turf. The addressee, Cardinal Bessarion, was himself Catholic (which tends to be a prerequisite for being a Cardinal), and a good target for lobbying; he too was a convert from Orthodoxy, and one of the more prominent Greek intellectuals of his day.

But I'm still stuck on what Apostolius calls the place. [siˈθia] is not [ˈsti.a]. The /i/ hasn't gone to [j], so the lenition doesn't make sense by Modern Cretan standards. Moreover, as Chatzidakis already wrote a century back, there's no evidence for the lenition from Renaissance literature, so the change must date from after 1669 anyway. When exactly I don't happen to know, because the readiest evidence for that would lie in Ottoman archives, and Greeks until fairly recently liked to pretend the Ottomans had no archives. (Turci sunt, non leguntur.) But the change can't date from the 1460s, and even if it did, it wouldn't be as [siˈθia].

There's another placename in Apostolius which probably confirms the absence of the sound change, but has problems of its own. The three western prefectures of Crete are named after their major cities: Hania, Rethymnon, Iraklion (formerly Kastro, "The Fortress", and Candia before that). Sitia never made it to major anything-at-all status; so its prefecture is Lasithi, named after the mountain plateau to its west. Lasithi is also mentioned by Apostolius, as Lasition. That would be consistent with /t/ > [θ] / _i, and the plateau is far enough from Sitia for the change to be allowed there.

The problem this time is, the /i/ is not [j], because the -on ending had long been deleted in the vernacular. So the sound change can't have happened: a learnèd Lasition corresponds to a vernacular Lasiti, not a *Lasitjo that would have gone to *Lasithjo. (Just as ὀμμάτιον /ommátion/ "eye" went to [mati(n)], not [matjo].)

So in Apostolius, we have a th in Sitia and a t in Lasithi, neither of which make sense by how the modern dialect works. The form may not just be Apostolius' imaginary friend either: you will on occasion see the spelling Sethia in Venetian documents, although I'd assumed it was just the random insertion of h's that transliterations of Greek are susceptible to.

So how can we explain Sithia? I don't know that we can; maybe it is just one of those things, a local variant without rhyme or reason. Which is the kind of defeat an historical linguist is never meant to admit to. There is a possibility that the vernacular form was actually Sithia all along; if Sithia was shortened to S'thia, S'thia would have to become Cornaro's S'tia by vernacular phonology, which does not tolerate the /sθ/ cluster either. But the Notitiae have Sitia from earlier on, so I'm not convinced that's what happened.

There's one more feature of Apostolius' letter which comes as a surprise. Ethnonyms, the names of people derived from where they've come from, have a multiplicity of suffixes to choose from in Greek. There's a similar diversity in English (which is not completely unrelated): New Yorker but Washingtonian, Muscovite but Milanese. For the Byzantines, this multiplicity meant abundant confusion about which was the right suffix to use when writing Classical Greek. For that reason, Stephen of Byzantium wrote the Ethnica, a dictionary of ethnonyms; and because it is chock full of towns and ethnonyms never heard of before or since, it's one of the texts the TLG lemmatiser has the most difficulty dealing with.

For Modern Greek, that multiplicity means an excuse for parochialism: every village picks its own suffix to names its people. Zakros has Zakrites; 20 km up the mountain, Ziros has Ziriotes. And the people of S'tia are S'tiaki, Στειακοί.

In Apostolius' letter, they aren't S'tiaki though; they're Σιθιανοί, Sithiani.

This came to me as even more of a shock than the [θ]. Surely the S'tiaki have always been S'tiaki; surely this proves that Apostolius was making ethnonyms up.

Of course it doesn't, though. Ethnonyms do change in time, and assuming the vernacular of 1460 is the same as that of 2010 is a mistake students of Early Modern Greek are all too prone to. Cypriot is the ethnonym used in English because Κυπριώτης [kipriotis] was the ethnonym that used to be used in Greek. In fact it's the form used in Erotokritos. But Standard Greek only knows the form Κύπριος [ciprios], and Cypriot itself uses Τζυπραίος [dʒipreos].

And after all, there was a time before S'tiaki and Sithiani, when inhabitants of Sitia were called something different again. When Diogenes Laertes wrote about Myson of Chen, he brought up the conundrum of why he was also termed Ἠτεῖος [ɛːteîos]. Diogenes speculates that maybe one of his parents was from Eteia instead, "for Eteia is a city in Crete".

Assuming Eteia is Sithia is Sitia; and the assumptions in this line of work are always more tenuous than you might think. (The assumption that Eteia is Sitia is why the town is now spelled with an eta, though: Σητεία.) And I still don't know where that [θ] in the name came from. Or that initial [s] for that matter (although the metanalysis of /eis ɛːteían/ "to Eteia" to /eis sɛːteían/ is as good a cause as any).
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