A diachronic take on the Source–Goal asymmetry

A bulk of typological and crosslinguistic evidence on the internal structure of motion events has shown that Goals and Sources behave asymmetrically. This asymmetry exhibits several morphosyntactic and semantic realizations: Goal markers are morphologically simpler than Source markers; there tend to be more fine-grained semantic distinctions within the Goal domain than within the Source domain, leading to higher numbers of markers for the encoding of Goal than of Source (type level); Goals are more frequently zero-marked than Sources; and, Goal relations are encoded more frequently in discourse (token level). In this chapter, we report similar imbalances in the behavior of Sources and Goals in inner Asia Minor Greek. We find that Goal markers are more numerous than markers denoting Source and that Goal paths are more often explicitly expressed in discourse. Additionally, we test the diachronic validity of these findings, which have been reached on the basis of mostly synchronic investigations, by examining the historical developments that the Modern Greek dialects of inner Asia Minor underwent in the formal expression of Goal and Source. We analyze the (a)symmetrical relations that hold between the two locative roles as evidenced by the qualitative and quantitative use of the prepositions se ‘to, at’, os ‘up to, until’, tʃax/tʃaus ‘up to, until’, and apo ‘from’, focusing specifically on the implications that the diachronic loss of se, the most frequent Goal marker, had for the spatial system of inner Asia Minor Greek. Our analysis shows that Goal markers remain morphologically less complex than Source markers across diachronic stages; and, that the overt Goal marker develops into a zero marker earlier than the Source marker. These findings support the Goal-over-Source predominance hypothesis. However, our analysis also indicates that the asymmetry could under certain circumstances work in the opposite direction.