Preservation and Management of Greek Dialectal Data

Abstract

Greek dialects of Asia Minor are considered as ideal case studies on the elucidation of the evolution of the Greek language as well on different phenomena of language contact, due to their longtime contact with the Turkish language and their relative isolation from the other Greek dialects. In fact, the dialects in question constitute a rich cultural and language heritage in threat of extinction. Therefore, there is an urgent need of describing and preserving this invaluable heritage. In this paper, an innovative system of archiving and management of digitized written and oral data from three Greek dialects of Asia Minor (Pontic, Cappadocian, Aivaliot) is presented. The system also contains a search and retrieve component which enables: (a) a combined search at different levels of linguistic representation, (b) combined search in both written and oral data and (c) access to metadata.