Miş and miʃimu: an instance of language contact in Cyprus

This paper explores the syntactic and semantic similarities between Cypriot Turkish mIş / (y)mIş and its Cypriot Greek counterpart miʃimu. We show that the aspectual function(s) of the verbal suffix mIş are restricted in Cypriot Turkish and that both copular (y)mIş and verbal suffix mIş can be treated as a discourse particle indexing a particular type of illocutionary force (dissociative). Cypriot Greek miʃimu, a clear case of borrowing, only displays the dissociative function; it is therefore tempting to argue that this dissociative marker may have been copied back to Cypriot Turkish as a free morpheme with a purely dissociative force, thereby pointing to language (or, in this case, dialect) contact as a reciprocal relation.