Comparative Greek

	Hatzidakis (1892) B01	Newton (1972) B18	Kontossopoulos (1983) B19	Trudgill (2003) B02	Pantelidis (2016) B26	Horrocks (2020) B20	Chatzikyriakidis et al. (2026) B13	VLACH (ÖAW) (n.d.) B05
Kind	Feature based division	Regional groups	Lexical distribution	Feature areas	Historical zone	Broad headings	Dataset partition	Collection organisation
What it groups	Northern and southern varieties, with intermediate cases	Six regional groups: Peloponnesian and Ionian, Cretan and Cycladic, Southeastern, Northern, Old Athenian, Maniot	The Greece of «τι» and the Greece of «ίντα»	Areas defined by six phonological features	A proposed southern Greek dialect zone	Eight broader headings, including Pontic and Cappadocian, Tsakonian and South Italian	Ten corpus labels, including Katharevousa	Collection organised by area and vocalism type
Criteria	Unstressed vocalism	Phonological criteria as reported by Trudgill	Distribution of the interrogative combined with loss of unstressed high vowels	Six phonological criteria	Historical evidence linking Old Athenian, Peloponnesian and eastern Central Greek	Broad headings as cited by VLACH	Operational partition of a computational dataset	Organisation of an archive collection
Time window	A late nineteenth century description	Not verified from the original	Not verified from the original	A contiguous area with a notional 1900 baseline	A tentative chronology with internal discontinuities	Edition and page not yet checked	A 2026 dataset	An undated institutional overview
Access	Original examined	Mediated	Mediated	Original examined	Original examined	Mediated	Original examined	Original examined
Locator	pp.342–343	B02 §3 pp.49–50 (χάρτης xii και σσ.13–15 του πρωτοτύπου)	B02 §3 p.49	§§2–3 pp.48–50; §§5–7 pp.53–62	pp.303–304, 308–311, §4.1	VLACH, Further classifications (Horrocks 2020:382)	pp.3138–3140, §§3–3.1.6	Classification overview; Northern/Southern/Semi-northern varieties; Further classifications
Relies on	·	·	·	Newton (1972), Kontossopoulos (1983)	·	·	·	·
Note	The author states that the limits are uncertain and that Asia Minor is insufficiently studied. The division is approximate, not a border.	The original has not been examined. Everything shown here comes from Trudgill's (2003) report of it.	A lexical distribution does not define a genealogy on its own. The article of 1983 and 1984 has not been obtained.	Excludes several outlying traditions and calls its geographic assignments tentative. It relies substantially on Newton and Kontossopoulos, so three names are not three independent field surveys.	A historical and areal proposal, not a taxonomy of all Greek.	Known only through VLACH. A heading that joins Pontic and Cappadocian does not merge their evidence.	A dataset labelling system, not a hereditary classification or complete inventory. Its label for a register shows why entity type and dataset label must stay separate.	VLACH itself distinguishes its collection organisation from linguistic classification.

How to read a comparison

Every cell says one of the following, and none is left blank without an explanation:

Assigned. The source places the unit in a group, under the name it gives.
Mentioned. The source mentions the unit at that locator, but its assignment has not yet been entered.
Sources disagree. The source records a difference from another scheme. Both views stay visible.
Dataset label. The source is a dataset using a label, not a hereditary classification.
Not yet checked. The Atlas has not yet looked at whether the source says anything about this unit. That does not mean the source treats it as absent.

A unit missing from a source never counts as zero. No similarity scores are computed from empty cells.

Two research programmes

Internal comparison asks how a defined feature is realised within Greek across varieties, periods and registers. Descriptive similarity, common inheritance, shared innovation, parallel development and diffusion are different relations. External comparison asks about Greek and other languages. Common descent, borrowing, calquing, structural convergence and chance resemblance are different hypotheses. A shared word does not on its own establish either relatedness or the direction of borrowing.

The comparability contract

Before any forms are chosen, the question, the feature definition, the environment, the unit of observation, the sample and the exclusions are recorded. A lemma is compared with a lemma, a specific inflected form with the same form. Negation in a main clause is not compared with negation in an imperative. Phonology is compared only in comparable environments, with each source's transcription conventions.

Variety	Hatzidakis (1892)Feature based divisionOriginal examined	Newton (1972)Regional groupsMediated	Kontossopoulos (1983)Lexical distributionMediated	Trudgill (2003)Feature areasOriginal examined	Pantelidis (2016)Historical zoneOriginal examined	Horrocks (2020)Broad headingsMediated	Chatzikyriakidis et al. (2026)Dataset partitionOriginal examined	VLACH (ÖAW) (n.d.)Collection organisationOriginal examined
KatharevousaFW-017
Epirotic GreekSCOPE-001
Macedonian GreekSCOPE-002
Thracian GreekSCOPE-003
Thessalian GreekSCOPE-004
Peloponnesian GreekSCOPE-005
Maniot GreekSCOPE-006
TsakonianSCOPE-007
Cypriot GreekSCOPE-008
Cretan GreekSCOPE-009
Dodecanesian GreekSCOPE-010
Cycladic GreekSCOPE-011
Chian GreekSCOPE-012
Heptanesian GreekSCOPE-013
Northern Aegean GreekSCOPE-014
Pontic GreekSCOPE-015
Cappadocian GreekSCOPE-017
Griko (Salento)SCOPE-022
Greko (Calabria)SCOPE-023
Greco-CorsicanSCOPE-027

Comparative Greek

How do Hatzidakis (1892), Newton (1972), Trudgill (2003) and Horrocks (2020) classify 14 varieties of Greek?

How to read a comparison

Two research programmes

The comparability contract

The other comparison modes

Vocabulary and meaning

Pronunciation

Morphology

Grammar and syntax

Historical development

Language contact