Η ΔΙΑΛΕΚΤΟΣ ΤΩΝ ΜΕΓΑΡΩΝ ΣΤΗΝ ΗΛΕΚΤΡΟΝΙΚΗ ΒΑΣΗ GREED

Abstract

Greece contains a rich variety of dialects (cf. Kontosopoulos 2006), some of which are used systematically in every-day speech, while others are restricted to specific groups of elders and are in danger of extinction. Νo attempt has been made to digitize, catalogue and encode dialectal data until very recently, when the Laboratory of Modern Greek Dialects started developing the GREED Database, with the aim to facilitate access to dialectal data, both linguistic and metalinguistic, in order to share dialectal information with the international linguistic community and ultimately preserve a significant linguistic heritage. More particularly, we present the dialect of Megara. The base has been built on established standards, such as the TEI Header, OLAC and IMDI, and its main goal is the enhancement of the material, the exchange of data and the support of academic research activities. It is not dependent on specific operational systems (OS) and commercial software, and a principal characteristic is the three-dimensional structuring concerning (i) the dialectal data, (ii) the metalinguistic data and (iii) the combined browsing of both. Although the work is still in progress, GREED contains 20 hours of natural dialectal speech from Megara, which is accompanied by metalinguistic information (overall: 400 hours of dialectal speech and 40 hours of material are already annotated and transcribed). Among the future benefits of the database will be to help future dialectal research, in categorizing and organizing various phonological and morphological phenomena, which are found cross-dialectally, and make easier the publication of dictionaries and grammars of the various Modern Greek dialects