1 Mirambel, A., ‘Pour une grammaire historique du grec médiéval: problèmes et méthodes’, Actes du XIIe Congrès International des Etudes Byzantines, Ochride 1961, II (Belgrade 1964) 391–403 Google Scholar.

2 More details can be found on the project website: http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/greek/grammarofmedievalgreek.

3 Browning, R., Medieval and Modern Greek, 2nd edn (Cambridge 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jeffreys, M., ‘The silent millennium: thoughts on the evidence for spoken Greek between the last papyri and Cretan drama’, Φ1ΛΕΛΛΗΝ. Studies in Honour of Robert Browning, ed. Constantinides, C. N. et al. (Venice 1996) 133—49Google Scholar; see also Th. Markopoulos, ‘H έρευνα της γλωσσικής αλλαγής στα κείμενα της Μεσαιωνικής Ελληνικής: ζητήματα μεθοδολογίας’, Proceedings of the 8^th International Conference on Greek Linguistics, loannina, 30 August-2 September 2007 [e-book] (forthcoming).

4 Psichari, J., ‘L’article féminin pluriel au moyen âge et de nos jours’, Essais de grammaire historique néo-grecque I (Paris 1886)Google Scholar; Hatzidakis, G. N., ‘Περί τοδ σκοποϋ κοή τής μεθόδου τής περΐ τήν μέσην και νεαν Έλληνικήν έρεύνης’ and ‘Περι τοϋ χαρακτήρος τής γλώσσης τών μεσαιωνικών και νεωτέρων συγγραφέων’, Μεσαιωνικά кса Nía. Έλλψικά I (Athens 1905) 360–405 Google Scholar and 482-536, respectively.

5 See, e.g., Joseph, B. D., Morphology and Universals in Syntactic Change: Evidence from Medieval and Modern Greek (New York 1990) 4–7 Google Scholar; Cheila-Markopoulou, D., ‘Προβλήματα διαχρονικής σύνταξης: οι ελεύθερες αναφορικές προτάσεις στα μεσαιωνικά και νέα ελληνικά’, Γλωσσολογία 9-10 (1990-1991) 13–42 Google Scholar, esp. 14-8; Pappas, P., Variation and Morphosyntactic Change in Greek: From Clitics to Affixes (Basingstoke and New York 2004) 15-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lendari, T. and Manolessou, I., ‘H εκφορά του έμμεσου ανηκειμένου στα μεσοαωνικά ελληνικά. Γλωσσολογικά κοα εκδοτικά προβλήματα’, Studies in Greek Linguistics. Proceedings of the 23nd [sic] Annual Meeting of the Department of Linguistics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Thessaloniki 2003) 394–405 Google Scholar.

6 Cf.van Reenen, P., ‘La linguistique des langues anciennes et la systématisation de ses données’, Actes du IVe Colloque sur le Moyen Age français, ed. Dees, A. (Amsterdam 1985) 433-70Google Scholar; Fleischmann, S., ‘Philology, linguistics and the discourse of the medieval text’, Speculum 65 (1991) 19–37 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fleischmann, S., ‘Methodologies and ideologies in historical linguistics: on working with older languages’, Textual Varameters in Older Languages, ed. Herring, S. et al. (Amsterdam 2000) 33–58 Google Scholar; Lobenstein-Reichmann, A. and Reichmann, O., Neue historische Grammatiken (Tübingen 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Labov, W., Principles of Linguistic Change. Vol. I: Internal Factors (Oxford 1994), 11 Google Scholar. For Janda, R. and Joseph, B. (‘Introduction’, The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, ed. Joseph, B. and Janda, R. (Oxford 2003) 14)Google Scholar, ‘imperfect’ would be a more accurate characterization than ‘bad’, since ‘bad’ implies useless, whereas ‘imperfect’ suggests data that are usable, but not as helpful as one might wish.

8 Labov, Principies, 11-2; Lightfoot, D., The Development of Language: Acquisition, Change and Evolution (Oxford 1999) 8–11 Google Scholar; Kroch, A., ‘Reflexes of grammar in patterns of language change’, Language Variation and Change 1 (1989) 199–244 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 199-200.

9 Van Reenen ‘La linguistique des langues anciennes’, 434-6.

10 For an overview of sociolinguistic approaches to language change, see G. Guy, ‘Variationist approaches to phonological change’, in Joseph and Janda, Handbook, 369-100.

11 Chambers, J. K. and Trudgill, P., Dialectology, 2nd edn (Cambridge 1998) 48 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Schneider, E. W., ‘Investigating variation and change in written documents’, The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, ed. Chambers, J. K., Trudgill, P. and Schilling-Estes, N. (Oxford 2002) 67–96 Google Scholar, at p. 82.

13 Labov, Principles, 21-3; Lass, R., Historical Linguistics and Language Change (Cambridge 1997) 24–32 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Joseph and Janda, Handbook, 23-38.

14 Fleischmann, ‘Methodologies and ideologies’, 46. The German tradition of Indo-European linguistics standardly employs the term ‘Korpussprachen’ or ‘corpus languages’ in a similar context, in order to refer to ‘dead’ languages, reachable only through a closed corpus of written attestations, such as Old Persian or Tocharian. For a definition see Langslow, D. R., ‘Approaching bilingualism in corpus languages’, Bilingualistn in Ancient Society: Language Contact and the Written Text, ed. Adams, J. N., Janse, M. and Swain, S. (Oxford 2002), 23–51 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Lass, Historical Linguistics, 100.

16 Although this could be said of any text, including even transcripts (since intonation, breaks, accompanying gestures, etc., are lost), the point is that for modern languages it is never assumed that a written text is a reliable representative of spoken language, whereas for medieval languages, and for Greek in particular, it often is.

17 Fleischmann, ‘Philology, linguistics, and the discourse of the medieval text’, 21-2.

18 Biber, D., Variation across Speech and Writing (Cambridge 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roberts, C. and Street, B., ‘Spoken and written language’, in Coulmas, F. (ed.), The Handbook of Sociolinguistics (Oxford 1997) 168-86Google Scholar.

19 Van Reenen, ‘La linguistique des langues anciennes’, 441-5; Schneider, ‘Investigating variation and change in written documents’, 71.

20 Reichmann, O. and Wegera, K.-P. (ed.) Frühneuhochdeutsche Grammatik (Tübingen 2003)Google Scholar; K.-P. Wegera, ‘Grammatiken zu Sprachabschnitten’, in Lobenstein-Reichmann and Reichmann, Neue historische Grammatiken, 231-40.

21 Kriaras, E., Βυζαντινά ίπποτικά μυθιστορήματα [Βασική Βιβλιοθήκη, 2] (Athens 1955)Google Scholar.

22 Manolessou, I., ‘Οι μη λογοτεχνικές πηγές ως μαρτυρίες για τη γλώσσα της μεσαιωνικής περιόδου’, Λεξικογραψικόν Δελτίον 24 (2003) 61–88 Google Scholar; Cheila-Markopoulou, D., ‘Review of P. Pappas, Variation and Morphosyntactic Change: From Clitics to Affixes’, Journal of Greek Linguistics 5 (2004) 199–212 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 201.

23 Lendari and Manolessou, Ή εκφορά του έμμεσου αντικειμένου στη Μεσοαωνική Ελληνική’, 395-6.

24 Alexiou, S., О Αιγενής Ακρίτης кал το Ασμα του Αρμούρη (Athens 1987) 177 Google Scholar.

25 Egea, J., Gramática de la Cronaca de Morea [Veleia Anejo 4] (Vitoria 1988) 42 Google Scholar.

26 Papathomopoulos, M. and Jeffreys, E., The War of Troy (Athens 1996) lxxvii Google Scholar; Jeffreys, E., ‘H συμβολή των πηγών ενός κειμένου στην εκδοτική του αποκατάσταση’, Θεωρίοί και πράξη των εκδόσεων της υστεροβυζαντινής, αναγεννησιακής кал μεταβυζαντινής δημώδους γραμματείας, ed. Eideneier, H., Moennig, U. and Toufexis, N. (Herakleion 2001) 71–95 Google Scholar, at pp. 79, 89.

27 Bakker, W., ‘H γλώσσα των συμβολαιογραφικών πράξεων του Μανόλη Βαρούχα’, Cretan Studies 1 (1988) 17–24 Google Scholar; Charalambakis, Ch., Τλωσσικές παρατηρήσεις στο κατάστιχο του Ιωάννη Ολόκαλου’, Cretan Studies 6 (1998) 109-27Google Scholar; Karantzola, E., ‘Διαλεκτική διαφοροποίηση της πρώιμης νέας ελληνικής: η μαρτυρία κρητνκών νοταριακών εγγράφων’, Ανθη Φιλίας, Τιμητικό οίψιέρωμα στον καθηγητή Κωνσταντίνο Μηνά, ed. Papantonakis, G. et al. (Rhodes 2005) 249-66Google Scholar; for other areas, see, e.g., Ch. Bassea-Bezantakou, ‘Διαλεκηκά στοιχεία σε ιδιωτικά έγγραφα (μεσα 16°”-αρχές 19^ου αι.) από τη Δ. Μάνη’, in Papantonakis et al., Ανθη Φιλίας, 271-91; Minas, K., H γλώσσα των δημοσιευμενων μεσαιωνικών ελληνικών εγγράφων της Κάτω Ιτα,λίχς κχι Σικελίας (Athens 1994)Google Scholar.

28 Markopoulos, Ή έρευνα της γλωσσικής αλλαγής στα κείμενα της Μεσαιωνικής Ελληνικής’.

29 Namely, the four irreplaceable sources of Medieval Greek data and its analysis: Hatzidakis, G. N., Μεσαιωνικά και Μα Ελληνικά (Athens 1905-1907)Google Scholar; Jannaris, A., An Historical Greek Grammar, Chiefly of the Attic Dialect (London 1897, repr. Hildesheim 1987)Google Scholar; Dieterich, K., Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der griechischen Sprache von den hellenistischen Zeit bis zum 10. Jahrhundert N. Chr. [Byzantinisches Archiv, Heft 1] (Leipzig 1898, repr. Hildesheim 1970)Google Scholar; Psaltes, S., Grammatik der byzantinischen Chroniken (Göttingen 1913, repr. Göttingen 1974)Google Scholar.

30 Browning, Medieval and Modern Greek, 94.

31 Horrocks, G., Greek: A History of the Language and Its Speakers (London 1997) 232 Google Scholar; Joseph, B., ‘Textual authenticity: evidence from Medieval Greek’, Textual Parameters in Older Languages, ed. Herring, S. et al. (Amsterdam 2000) 309-29, at pp. 321-2Google Scholar.

32 Spyridakis, G., Megas, G. A. and Petropoulos, D. A. (ed.), Ελληνικά δημοτικά τραγούδια (Athens 1962) 55 Google Scholar; Saunier, G. ‘To δημοτικό τραγοοδι του Πορφύρη’, Δωδώνη 20 (1961) 61–76 Google Scholar.

33 According to Markopoulos, Th. (The Category ‘Future’ in Greek: A Diachronie Investigation of Three Future-referring Periphrastic Forms, unpublished PhD thesis, Cambridge 2006, 183)Google Scholar, the earliest attestation of θέ va in a medieval text comes from the Cypriot Chronicle of Machairas (III.509 in Dawkins’ edition), and can thus be dated to the fifteenth century, if not earlier; however, the form appears in only one of the three mss. of the text, V, dated to the sixteenth century.

34 Guy, ‘Variationist approaches to phonological change’, 370.

35 Fleischmann, ‘Methodologies and ideologies’, 47-8.

36 Pintzuk, S., ‘Variationist approaches to syntactic change’, in Joseph, and Janda, , Handbook, 509-28, at pp. 511-2Google Scholar.

37 A short account of the debate can be found in Browning, Medieval and Modern Greek, 9-11.

38 Hinterberger, M., ‘Sprachliche Variationsformen in volkssprachlichen metrischen Werken der spätbyzantinischen und frühneugriechischen Zeit’, Origini della letteratura neogreca: Atti del secondo congresso internazionale ‘Neograeca Medii Aevi’ (Venezia, 7-10 Novembre 1991) I, ed. Panagiotakis, N. M. (Venice 1993) 158-68Google Scholar; M. Hinterberger, ‘To φοανόμενο της πολυτυπίας σε δημώδη κείμενα’, in Eideneier, Moennig and Toufexis, Θεωρία. και πράξη, 215–44; Jeffreys, ‘The silent millennium’.

39 Browning, Medieval and Modern Greek, 11; Joseph, ‘Textual authenticity’, 309.

40 The earliest grammar of vernacular Greek is that of Nikolaos Sophianos, c. 1550. However, it remained unpublished, as did all subsequent efforts by Greeks to describe their language. The first published grammar of the contemporary language written by a Greek (Dimitrios Venieris) dates to 1799. It is doubtful whether the grammatical descriptions of Greek written in other languages (Latin, Italian, etc.) were accessible to Greeks. On the issue, see Manolessou, I., ‘Μεσοαωνική γραμματική και μεσαιωνικες γραμματικές’, Neograeca Medii Aevi VI: Γλώσσα, παράδοση και ποιητική (Ioannina, 29 Sept.-З Oct. 2005), ed. Mavromatis, G. (Ioannina 2007)Google Scholar, forthcoming.

41 Siegel, J., ‘Koines and Koiné formation’, Language in Society 14 (1985) 357-78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tuten, D., Koineization in Medieval Spanish (Berlin 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Terkourafi, M., ‘Understanding the present through the past: processes of Koineization in Cyprus’, Diacbronica 22 (2005) 309-72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Howell, R. B., ‘Immigration and Koineization: The formation of Early Modern Dutch vernaculars’, Transactions of the Philological Society 104 (2006) 207-27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 This is the model most often employed within the generative paradigm, cf. Kroch, ‘Reflexes of Grammar’; Crisma, P. ‘Sintassi formale e lingue medievali’, Archivio Glottologico Italiano 85 (2000) 38–84 Google Scholar. But it need not presuppose a specific grammatical/syntactic framework.

43 The question, of course, cannot be answered for ‘corpus languages’ with a single textual attestation, since there is no measure of comparison. E.g., as Joseph and Janda (Handbook, 143, n. 28) note, it cannot be determined whether there was variation in Gothic to the same extent as in Old High German, since our records of Gothic only suggest otherwise because we have the Gothic of a single speaker: the Bible translation of Bishop Wulfila.

44 The tripartite distinction (minus Greek examples) is from Lass, Historical Linguistics, 62. Details on the [1] > [r] change in Greek in Psichari, J., ‘Essais de grammaire historique: Le changement de 1 en r devant consonnes en grec ancien, médiéval et moderne’, Memoires Orientaux, Congrès de 1905 (Paris 1905) 231-6Google Scholar; I. Manolessou and N. Toufexis, ‘Phonetic change in Medieval Greek’, Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Greek Linguistics.

45 Dosuna, J. Méndez, ‘When zeroes count for nothing: the (mythical) origins of nasal deletion in Greek’, Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of Modern Greek Dialects and Linguistic Theory, Mytilene 30 September-3 October 2004, ed. Janse, M., Joseph, B. D. and Ralli, A. (Patras 2006) 272-81Google Scholar, at p. 273.

46 Jannacone, S., ‘Sur l’hypercorrection en grec’, Neophilologus 35 (1951) 151-61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Lendari and Manolessou, ‘H εκφορά του έμμεσου αντικειμένου’.

48 Mackridge, P., ‘An editorial problem in medieval Greek texts: the position of the object clitic pronoun in the Escorial Digenes Akrites’, in Panagiotakis, Origini della letteratura neogreca I, 325-42Google Scholar; Pappas, Variation and Morphosyntactic Change in Greek; Condoravdi, C. and Kiparsky, P., ‘Clitics and clause structure: The Late Medieval Greek system’, Journal of Greek Linguistics 5 (2004) 159-83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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50 S. Kaklamanis, ‘Άπο το χειρόγραφο στο εντυπο: то ποαχνίδι τών γραφών’, in Eideneier, et al., Θεωρία кои πράξη των εκδόσεων, 101-86; Panagiotakis, N. M., ‘То κείμενο τής πρώτης εκδοσης τοΰ Άπόκοπου. Τυπογραφική και φιλολογική διερεύνηση’, Θησαορίσμιχτιχ 21 (2001) 89–209 Google Scholar.

51 Fischer, O., Morphosyntactic Change: Functional and Formal Perspectives (Oxford 2007) 33 Google Scholar.

52 Newton, B., ‘The dialect geography of Modern Greek active inflections’, Glossa 7 (1973) 189–230 Google Scholar, at pp. 226-7; Holton, D., ‘Notes on some verb forms in the work of Leonardos Dellaportas’, Filia. Studies in honour of Bo-Lennart Eklund, ed. Sabatakakis, V. and Vejleskov, P. (Lund 2006) 97–107 Google Scholar.

53 Hatzidakis, G. N., Einleitung in die neugriechische Grammatik (Leipzig 1892) 19 Google Scholar; Manolessou, ‘Ol μη λογοτεχνικές πηγές’, 73-5.

54 Andriotis, N., ‘ΠερΙ τής άρχής τών βορείων ίδιωμάτων τής νέας έλληνικής’, EEBS 10 (1933) 304-23Google Scholar; Manolessou, Όι μη λογοτεχνικες πηγες’, 78-9.

55 The paradigm of the imperfect of oxytone (ancient contract) verbs presents more variation than any other sector of the verbal system. Dialects differ in the choices they make, and variation is apparent even in Standard Modern Greek. According to Papadopoulos, A. (Γροίμματική τών βορείων ίδιωμάτων τής Νέας Έλληνικής γλώσσης (Athens 1927) 99–100 Google Scholar), the -ουσα ending is limited to Macedonia and Thrace, whereas the -αγα ending appears in Thessaly, Epirus and Sterea Ellada. The Peloponnesian dialects also present -αγα exclusively, and even extend this form to e-stem verbs, e.g. μπορώ — μπόρηγα, φορώ — φόρηγα etc. For details of these dialect forms see Pantelidis, N., ‘The active imperfect of the verbs of the “2nd conjugation” in the Peloponnesian varieties of Modern Greek’, Journal of Greek Linguistics 4 (2003) 3–43 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The situation in linguistic descriptions of the Medieval and Early Modern Greek period is as follows: the grammars of Sophianos, Germano and Portius do not mention either the -οϋσα or the -αγα form. The -οϋσα form appears first in the seventeenth-century grammar of Nicephoros Romanos, a native of Thessaloniki ( Boyens, J., Grammatica linguae graecae vulgaris [...] per patrem Romanum Nicephori Thessalonicensem Macedonem (Liège 1908)Google Scholar), while the -αγα form first appears in the 1749 grammar of Kanellos Spanos, who was a Peloponnesian ( Vasilikos, I., Κανέλλοο Σπα,νοΰ, Γρα,μματικη τής κοινής τών Έλλήνων γλώσσης [...] (Trieste 1908))Google Scholar.

56 Mirambel, A., ‘Dialectes néohelléniques et syntaxe’, Bulletin de la Société Linguistique de Paris 58 (1963) 85–134 Google Scholar.