Παρατηρήσεις για τις κοινές ποικιλίες της Κύπρου / Remarks on the koine varieties of Cyprus

This paper explores structural aspects of the two emerging koine varieties of Cyprus, the Cypriot Greek koine and the Cypriot Turkish koine; it also addresses sociolinguistic aspects of dialect levelling, dialect‑to‑standard convergence and koine formation. Arguably the earlier sociolinguistic situation in Cyprus was marked by the coexistence of dialectal varieties on the one hand and the national standard languages on the other; Cypriot Greek and Cypriot Turkish were typically regarded as the ‘low’ codes, and the standard varieties were regarded as the ‘high’ codes. However, a novel linguistic situation is currently developing in which a change is taking place from diglossia to diaglossia, a complex (socio)linguistic situation mediated by a host of extralinguistic factors, including the structure of social networks, attitudes, indexicalities of particular variants, accommodation, and the interface among such factors and systemic linguistic constraints. On the basis of the provided data the argument is made that one of the reasons why prestige is accruing to the two koines may be the fact that they are (and are perceived as) hybrid, structurally mixed varieties, due to prolonged and dense contact with the respective standard varieties; the two koines are mixed enough to carry ((c)overt) prestige and thus to arrest full convergence with Standard Greek or Standard Turkish.