Negation

Romeyka differs from Modern Greek (and other Pontic Greek varieties to a lesser degree) with respect to negation in many ways:

  1. Retention of Classical Greek negator ou:
    Classical Greek negator ou underwent a Jespersen’s Cycle-type development to surface as modern dhen. Romeyka, however, did not undergo this process, and preserves: (i) a form that is a direct retention of Classical ou(k), namely (u)tš(i) (with palatatalisation); (ii) the same type of allomorphy as that found in Classical Greek.
     
  2. Retention of Classical Greek me in negated conditionals
    Modern Greek negates conditionals with dhen. On the contrary, Classical Greek made use of the negator me, which is, crucially, preserved in Romeyka in negated counterfactual conditionals and exclamatives.
     
  3. Retention of Medieval Greek negator miðen
    In Medieval Greek, there was a secondary form, miðen, was in competition with me which was the par-excellence sentential negator of non-veridical propositions; the latter won out and Modern Greek retains midhen as meaning ‘zero’ only, whereas Romeyka has retained the form as a negator proper namely miðen. 

References in which this material appears:

Chatzopoulou, K. & I. Sitaridou (to appear). 'Negator selection in Romeyka conditionals: Jespersen's cycle for NEG2 and Conditional Inversion'. In Kiss, Katalin, et al (Eds.), Fuctional heads across time: syntactic reanalysis and change. Oxford: OUP.
Sitaridou, I. (to appear). Romeyka negators: 'Nothing makes sense except in the light of diachrony'. Ms., University of Cambridge.
Sitaridou, I. (2016). ‘Reframing the phylogeny of Asia Minor Greek: The view from Pontic Greek’. CHS Research Bulletin, Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University, Volume 4, Issue 1. pp. 1-17
Sitaridou, I. (2014). ‘Modality, antiveridicality, and complementation in Pontic Greek: The Romeyka infinitive as a negative polarity item’. Lingua 148. pp. 118-146.
Gibbins, A. (2013). Modality and negation in the history of Greek: Evidence from Romeyka. Undergraduate Linguistics Dissertation, University of Cambridge.