Institute for Mediterranean Studies

Dimitra Melissaropoulou

Professor
Dept. of Italian Language and Literature, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Department of Linguistics

Dimitra Melissaropoulou is a Professor of Linguistics at the Department of Italian Language and Literature, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She obtained her PhD degree in 2007, University of Patras (with a scholarship HERAKLEITOS funded by the European Science Foundation and the Greek Ministry of Education, under the supervision of Prof. Angela Ralli) and then awarded a one-year Post-doctoral Scholarship on variation in word formation (by the Greek State Scholarships Foundation). Her research interests focus on the fields of morphology, language variation and change, dialectology, dialectal typology, and language contact. As a member of the Laboratory of Modern Greek Dialects at the University of Patras, her experience also involves participation, as a post-doctoral fellow, in the planning and implementation of a significant number of research projects on dialect documentation, description, and analysis. Her publications address issues on the diachronic and synchronic study of Modern Greek dialects and Standard Modern Greek, based both on fieldwork and written sources. The focus of her research has been on the study of language variation and change and language contact emphasizing the morphological processes of diminution and augmentation, the restructuring of nominal inflection, the integration of nominal and verbal loans, the combinability of derivational suffixes, the notions of complexification vs. simplification in grammar, comparative structures, and the study of perfective structures in Modern Greek Dialects.

The last three years, she coordinated the DiCaDLanD research project (funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation), aiming at the Digitization of the Cappadocian Dialectal Landscape with two main deliverables: the Historical Lexicon and Linguistic Atlas of  . Within this frame the last few years, her research interests center around the application of quantitative dialectological, i.e., dialectometric approaches to the study of linguistic diversity not only for the calculation of purely linguistic and/or geographical distances and their correlation but also regarding the consideration of extra-linguistic parameters. 

Selected Publications

Melissaropoulou, D. 2024. Γλωσσικός Άτλαντας των διαλεκτικών ποικιλιών της Καππαδοκίας [The Linguistic Atlas of Cappadocian Dialects, 5 volumes]. Athens: Academy of Athens.

Bompolas, S. & D. Melissaropoulou. 2023b. A dialectometric approach to inner Asia Minor Greek: comparisons and associations between linguistic levels. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, fqad039. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqad039

Melissaropoulou, D. 2023. Greek.  In L. Körtvélyessy (ed.), Onomatopoeia in the world languages. Comparative Handbooks of Linguistics (CHL) series. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Melissaropoulou, D. 2022. Change in morphological complexity in the contact perspective: evidence from Cappadocian Greek word formation. LACUS FORUM 47.

Melissaropoulou, D., Bompolas, S. Ch. Tsimpouris. 2022. Digital cartography in the service of preservation of cultural linguistic heritage: implementing the electronic dialectal atlas of Cappadocian Greek. SCIENTIFIC CULTURE, 8, 2, 135-146.

Melissaropoulou, D. & C. Papanagiotou. 2021. Language variation and change in the formation of superlative constructions: implications for the organization of grammar. Dialectologia et Geolinguistica 29, 55-76. https://doi.org/10.1515/dialect-2021-0004

Melissaropoulou, D. & A. Ralli. 2020. Derivational networks in Greek. In A. Bagasheva, L. Körtvélyessy, P. Štekauer & S. Valera (eds.), Derivational networks across languages. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110686630-035

Μelissaropoulou, D. & Α. Ralli. 2019. Revisiting the borrowability scale(s) of grammatical elements: evidence from Modern Greek contact induced varieties. Journal of Language Contact, 12(3), 707-736.

Melissaropoulou, D. 2017. On the role of language contact in the reorganization of grammar: a case study on two Modern Greek contact induced dialects. Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics, 53(3), 449-485. https://doi.org/10.1515/psicl-2017-0017

Melissaropoulou, D. 2016. Variation in word formation in the light of the language contact factor: the case of Cappadocian Greek. Journal of Language Sciences, 55, 55-67.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2016.02.005

Melissaropoulou, D. 2015. Evaluative morphology in Greek. In N. Grandi & L. Korvelyessy (eds.), Handbook of Evaluative Morphology, 269-277. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Melissaropoulou, D. & Ralli, A. 2008. Headedness in diminutive formation: evidence from Modern Greek and its dialectal variation. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 55, 183-204.