"Ne touchez pas à mon dialecte" : Normalisation des noms géographiques et saillance de variables à Chypre

Abstract

Abstract In 1987 the Cypriot Permanent Committee for the Standardization of Geographical Names presented a complete catalogue of the 67,000 place names of Cyprus in their standardized version. The use of etymological, historical and orthographic criteria had as a consequence the replacement of several dialectal features. Although the changes proposed were quantitatively small, there was an immediate reaction to restore the traditionally established spelling. The discrepancy between the limited character of the changes proposed and the reactions provoked is due to the salience (Trudgill, 1986) of the dialectal features displaced. The identity function of such variables seems strong enough to make their replacement difficult, if not impossible.