‘Some Pamphlets on Dead Greek Dialects’: R.M. Dawkins and Modern Greek Dialectology

Abstract

After a brief account of the life and personality of R.M. Dawkins (Director of the British School at Athens, 1906–1914), based partly on unpublished material, the author summarizes Dawkins's career as an archaeologist, philologist, and folklorist. There follows a critical account of his work on the Greek dialects of Cappadocia and of other regions in central Asia Minor; Dawkins's magnum opus, Modern Greek in Asia Minor (1916) was the most thorough study ever made of this topic. Mention is made of Dawkins's contribution to the study of Pontic, which he was prevented by events from exploring thoroughly in situ. Apart from his work on individual dialects, his reputation as a dialectologist rests on his accumulation of evidence in support of his hypothesis that there is a fundamental east-west division in the Modern Greek dialects. The limitations of Dawkins's accumulative method are alluded to; he described a corpus rather than formulating rules for the generation of utterances. His contribution to the collection and classification of Greek folk tales – his second most important achievement – is also assessed. Finally mention is made of developments in Modern Greek studies since Dawkins's time.