Contrastivity in Pontic Greek

Abstract Efforts to impose linguistic uniformity have resulted in significant loss of dialectal variation in Greece thus rendering Greek dialectal syntax difficult to study. The present article aims to shed light on an understudied area of Greek dialectal syntax, namely the organization of information structure in Pontic Greek. Through empirical work, it is argued that [contrast] is an autonomous structural notion (in line with Vallduví and Vilkuna, 1998; Molnár, 2002) in Pontic Greek rather than a sub-feature of Focus, as traditionally held for Standard Modern Greek. In particular, is claimed that Pontic Greek (i) employs a rich particle system to express contrast; (b) CLLD does not have the same pragmatic import as in Standard Modern Greek, and; (c) “pa”-phrases are almost exclusively associated with a non-exhaustive reading, whereas focus movement is always associated with an exhaustive one; (d) information focus is obligatorily in the left periphery. On the basis of our findings we argue that there is evidence in favour of a Contrast projection in the CP domain.