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Tsakonian studies: The State-of-the-art.

Authors:
Tsakonian Studies: The State-of-the-Art
Nikos Liosis
Institute of Modern Greek Studies
nikosliosis@yahoo.gr
Περίληψη
Η τσακωνική ήταν ανέκαθεν αντικείµενο ερευνητικού ενδιαφέροντος στο πλαίσιο της
νεοελληνικής διαλεκτολογίας και της ιστορικής γλωσσολογίας της ελληνικής.
Πρόκειται για µια γενετικά και δοµικά αποµονωµένη θνήσκουσα νεοελληνική
διάλεκτο που διαθέτει χαρακτηριστικά ασυνήθιστα ή και µοναδικά για τα δεδοµένα
της ελληνικής. Τα χαρακτηριστικά αυτά προσελκύουν τα τελευταία χρόνια το
αυξανόµενο ενδιαφέρον γλωσσολόγων και από το χώρο της δοµικής γλωσσολογίας,
της κοινωνιογλωσσολογίας και της γλωσσολογίας επαφών. Τα άρθρο αυτό δεν
αποτελεί απλώς µια κριτική ανακεφαλαίωση και οµαδοποίηση των βασικών
πορισµάτων της τσακωνικής βιβλιογραφίας αλλά και µια προσπάθεια να αναδειχθούν
τα κενά που αποµένουν και να δοθούν κατευθύνσεις για µελλοντική έρευνα.
1. Introduction
Tsakonian is an outlying, highly divergent Modern Greek dialect and the only modern
variety of Greek that does not have its origins in the Hellenistic Koine. It is divided
into three subdialects: southern (Peloponnesian), northern (Peloponnesian), and the
more distinct Propontis Tsakonian. Map (1) shows the area where Peloponnesian
Tsakonian (southern and northern) is spoken today and the area where Propontis
Tsakonian was spoken until the
exchange of populations of 1922.
After the exchange the speakers of
Propontis Tsakonian were scattered
throughout various areas of Greece
and later shifted to SMG.
Peloponnesian Tsakonian has long
been the object of scientific interest,
both in the context of (a) the history of
the Greek language and (b) Modern
Greek dialectology:
(a) No basic history of the Greek
language is complete without an
extensive discussion of the dialect.
For example, Horrocks 2010 refers to
Tsakonian as a case of extreme dialect
resilience in his discussion of the fate
of the ancient Greek dialects (88, 382), and also as being exempt from basic changes
that led to the formation of Modern Greek, as seen, for example, from the reversal in
this dialect of the development of the high back vowel /u/, which in Modern Greek
gave the high front vowel /i/ (274). Browning, too, in his history of Medieval Greek
(124-5, 128-9, 135), gives an exhaustive description of the archaic characteristics of
the dialect, with particular emphasis on periphrastic verb forms and their
consequences for the development of the Tsakonian verbal system. Similar references
can be found in the histories of Christidis (2014: 380-387) and Adrados (2003: 501-
Map 1: The Tsakonian subdialects
509), in the historical introduction to the grammar of Triantafyllidis (1938: 303-308),
etc.
(b) Despite the fact that throughout its history it has been confined to a limited
number of speakers in a relatively small geographical area, Tsakonian occupies an
important position in the basic dialectological studies of Modern Greek which aim to
give a general overview of the dialect situation, such as those of Kontosopoulos
(2001: 3-6), where it is the first dialect to be discussed, and Trudgill (2003: 59), who,
summing up, stresses its high degree of divergence from the other Modern Greek
dialects.
2. The phases of Tsakonian studies based on their theoretical orientation
Tzitzilis (2000: 17-9), distinguishes three phases in the study of the Modern Greek
dialects, based on the theoretical frameworks within which the studies in question
were carried out:
a) The traditional phase of historical dialectology. To this period belong classic
works such as Papadopoulos’s (1955) historical grammar of the Pontic dialect,
Rohlfs’s (1950) grammar of Southern Italian Greek, and many others.
b) The phase of structural dialectology, where we find mainly phonological studies
of individual dialects, such as those of Margariti-Ronga (1985) on the northern dialect
of Siatista, Chatzisavvidis (1985) on the Pontic dialect of Matsouka, etc.
c) The phase of generative dialectology, whose main representative is Newton
1972.
These phases also apply to the study of Tsakonian, except for the fact that
Tsakonian is hardly represented in Newton’s work, being mentioned only in the
introductory chapter, where it is described as the idiosyncratic and isolated descendant
of a Doric dialect (13), and in the context of the preservation of the ancient ypsilon
(23).
2.1 The period of historical study of Tsakonian
The majority of the extant studies of Tsakonian are historical in orientation; these are
also the oldest studies, which start to appear from the second half of the 19
th
century
onwards, showing that scientific interest in Tsakonian began very early. In fact,
interest in Tsakonian began even earlier, before the emergence of scientific
linguistics, as shown by travellers’ observations on the dialect, which provide us with
the first attestations of its modern form. The first such observations are those of the
Turkish traveller Evliyâ Çelebi, who in 1668 produced a short list of just 35 words
(Dankoff 1991), and the Frenchman Villoison a century later (1788); despite its
brevity, Çelebi’s material is very important, as it marks the close of more than a
millennium without written evidence for the development of the dialect, since the last
references to Neo-Laconian by Hesychius in the 5
th
century AD.
The first systematic attempts to describe the grammar of the dialect, which, despite
their many weaknesses, may be considered to mark the beginning of the historical
phase of the study of Tsakonian, are those of Thiersch (1835), Oikonomou (1846,
1870), Deville (1866), and Schmidt (1870). The work of Deffner marks a major
breakthrough in the description of the dialect; in his grammar and vocabulary,
published in 1881 and 1923 respectively, he was the first to demonstrate scientifically
the Laconian origins of Tsakonian (see also Chatzidakis 1896). Brief historical
grammars of Tsakonian have been produced by Scutt (1912), Lekos (1920) and
Anagnostopoulos (1926); the latter provides a concise but careful presentation and
interpretation of various characteristic phenomena. The most important work to be
produced in the first half of the 20
th
century is the comprehensive and reliable study
by Pernot, Introduction à l’ étude du dialecte tsakonien (1934), while in the second
half of the 20
th
century, the most important scholar of Tsakonian was Costakis.
Among his many works, the following stand out: Σύντοµη Γραµµατική της
Τσακωνικής ∆ιαλέκτου (1951), in which he examines the northern subdialect and, for
the first time, the subdialect of the Propontis, the three-volume historical Λεξικό της
Τσακωνικής ∆ιαλέκτου (1986-7), and the more recent Γραµµατική της νότιας
Τσακωνικής ∆ιαλέκτου (1999). Many of the most important Greek and foreign
scholars of the history of the Greek language have worked on issues concerning the
phonology, morphology and lexicon of Tsakonian, which demonstrates that the
dialect has continuously been of interest for the field of historical linguistics;
examples include Thumb (1894), Chatzidakis (1905, 1929), and Schwyzer (1921).
Symeonidis (1972) and Caratzas (1976) deal with the etymology of the names
Tsakonas and Tsakonia, each providing a different interpretation, while Vagiakakos
(1986) and Minas (1992-3) investigate the genetic relationship of Tsakonian with the
dialect of Mani. Recently, studies have also been carried out within the framework of
a controversial branch of comparative linguistics, glottochronology, which, using
lexicostatistical and etymostatistical methods, aims to define the degree and date of
divergence of the Tsakonian branch from the ‘trunk’ of the Greek language (Nicholas
(Ms), Blažek 2010).
Also to be included in the category of historically-oriented works are studies of
particular issues in the history of the Greek language to which the contribution of
Tsakonian may be considered important. The most characteristic example is the well-
known study by Aerts Perifrastica (1965), where, in the context of his examination of
the development of periphrastic structures with the auxiliary verbs είναι and έχω from
the age of Homer to the present day, the author makes extended references to their
generalized use in the dialect (97-109, 120, 125-7, 175).
2.2 The period of structural / synchronic study of Tsakonian
The phase of structural / synchronic analysis of Tsakonian starts at the beginning of
the second half of the 20
th
century, with the publication of two papers by Mirambel on
the modal oppositions in the verb system (1954) and aspirated consonant phonemes in
the dialect (1960), which, nonetheless, also contain information about the historical
origins of these phenomena. In 1980 Charalambopoulos published his doctoral thesis
entitled ‘Phonological Analysis of the Tsakonian Dialect’, which involves a complete
examination of the phonological system of the southern subdialect within the
theoretical framework of functional phonology.
2.3 Sociolinguistics, Contact Linguistics and Tsakonian
From the beginning of the previous decade and a little earlier, works began to be
published which represent a new, fourth phase in modern Greek dialectology. These
works have a sociolinguistic orientation and attempt to capture dialect-internal
variation, or belong to the field of contact linguistics and often aim to describe
modern Greek dialects within the framework of the theory of language death. Among
the pioneering works in this field we have, for example, those of Katsogiannou (1996,
1999) and Profili (1999) for Southern Italian Greek, Moschonas (1996), Karyolaimou
(1999) and Malikouti-Drachman (1999 a & b, 2000) for Cypriot, Papazachariou
(1998) for the northern dialects, Drettas (1999) for Pontic, Janse (2001) for
Cappadocian, while the relationship between social and linguistic typology in
connection with the modern Greek dialects is investigated by Trudgill (2001).
In contrast to the static descriptive model of structural dialectology, within this
new framework Tsakonian is described in dynamic terms, usually as an endangered
code showing a high degree of variability in a situation of unequal contact with SMG.
Salminen (2007), in Moseley’s Encyclopedia of the World’s Endangered Languages,
describes it as an endangered language characterised as ‘moribund’, while Liosis
(2007, 2008) and Fedchenko (2013) examine the degree and speed of decay of the
two Peloponnesian subdialects, at the same time providing details of the
extralinguistic situation, including the speakers’ attitudes towards the language, and
their linguistic behaviour. Linguistic variables, phonological (e.g. contrast between
aspirated and unaspirated consonants or between palatal and palate-alveolar
consonants), morphological (e.g. imperfective subjunctive stem) and syntactic (e.g.
counterfactual structures with an auxiliary), are correlated with independent
extralinguistic variables, usually sex, location, age, and level of literacy of the
speakers.
The study of Tsakonian has produced the following contributions to the theory of
language death: a) phonological contrasts such as that between the alveolar fricative
/r/ and the postalveolar fricative /ʒ/ are more resilient to language decay when they are
associated with regional identity or other social contrasts (sex, age, etc.), that is, when
they take on an increased ‘social load’ or become emblematic (Liosis 2008), b) dialect
decay differs from language decay in general, as the former can also involve instances
of complication / augmentation of the language system, as dialect characteristics are
adapted to the parameters of the dominant variety of the same language (in this case
SMG), and do not simply recede towards more and more simple and general forms
(Liosis 2011a, 2014). In other words, the common linguistic base is extended by the
parallel or combined use of forms from two genetically closely related varieties, at the
cost, however, of the gradual replacement of dialect forms with those from the
dominant variety. Malikouti-Drachman (2000) comes to a similar conclusion in her
discussion of Cypriot and Cretan. A characteristic example of complication in
Tsakonian is the following: in the dialect there is a phonological rule of metathesis of
the semi-vowel [i] when preceded by a continuous dental consonant, as described in
(1):
(1) Φ δ
θ Φi δ
θ / i, e.g. [aˈθia] aiˈθa ‘sister’
Among semi-speakers of the dialect, however, we find hybrid forms such as
[aiˈθça], which result from the additional application of the SMG rule that applies in
the same environment, changing the semi-vowel into a consonant, as in SMG [vaˈθia]
[vaˈθça] ‘deeply’. Another example, this time in the area of inflectional
morphology, is the following: the Tsakonian plural is essentially uninflected for case,
but among masculine nouns there is a situation of allomorphy between the endings -οι
and -ου, which derive historically from the nominative plural ending -οι and the
accusative plural ending -ους respectively, e.g. οι ελάφοι / ελάφου ‘the deer’ (nom.
pl.) ~ τιρ ελάφοι / ελάφου (acc. pl.). Semi-speakers of the northern subdialect tend to
restore the historical relationship between the two allomorphs, reintroducing the use
of the suffix -ου as an accusative case marker, e.g. οι ελάφοι ~ τιρ ελάφου, which
constitutes enrichment of the declensional system of the dialect by adding an extra
case. This tendency has theoretical repercussions, as it shows that in a situation of
dialect decline the theory of unidirectionality of language change within the
framework of grammaticalization seems not to apply (Liosis 2014): the de-syncretism
of the nominative with the reassignment of the plural allomorph -ου as an accusative
plural morpheme presents a striking example of reversal of the direction of
grammaticalization, which may be added to a list of such examples (cf. Joseph 2001,
2004).
The diachronic dimension of the contacts of Tsakonian with other language systems
(Slavic, Western Romance, Arvanitika, Turkish) and other dialects (Heptanesian,
Roumeliot, Cretan) is examined in works such as Trudgill (2012) and Liosis (2013).
More specifically, Trudgill discusses the possibility that Tsakonian is a creoloid
language, i.e. a language which shows evidence of earlier periods of mixing or
simplification as a result of the influence of a relatively large number of adult
speakers, in this case of Slavic / Avar origin, but which does not show the reduction
of linguistic material characteristic of pidgin languages, and therefore does not
presuppose the existence of a pidgin stage. The degree of “Balkanity” of Tsakonian is
discussed by Tzitzilis (2001), who, in the context of Tsakonian in particular, proposes
a new theoretical framework for Balkan linguistics, and by extension areal linguistics
in general, according to which the basic unit should be considered the dialect rather
than the language.
2.4. The study of Tsakonian today: a combination of diachronic, synchronic and
sociolinguistic approaches
The most important and comprehensive study of the dialect is Chr. Tzitzilis ‘The
Tsakonian Dialect’, to appear in the volume Modern Greek Dialects, edited by Chr.
Tzitzilis, to be published by the Institute of Modern Greek Studies; in essence it is a
monograph which, taking into account all the material which has been published to
date, proposes new interpretations and offers solutions for many of the controversial
issues of Tsakonian linguistics, including its genetic and typological position among
the modern Greek dialects. This work represents a combined historical, synchronic
and sociolinguistic approach to the study of Tsakonian: it highlights the archaic and
specifically Laconian character of the dialect, but also its characteristic innovations,
referring to all the levels of linguistic analysis, and including detailed discussion not
only of its relationship with other languages, dialects and with SMG, but also of the
linguistic consequences of its decline.
The contribution of the historical part of the work is not confined simply to
confirming the genetic structure and typological isolation of the dialect, and its
consequential importance for modern Greek dialectology. It also presents the dialect
as an invaluable tool for the reconstruction of ancient Laconian. The relevance of
Tsakonian for ancient Greek dialectology can be seen from the fact that it is discussed
in works belonging to this field; see, for example, the two extensive entries on
Tsakonian in the Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics, edited by
Giannakis (2014). Note that the Laconian character of the dialect was not
unanimously accepted until very recently. For example, Pernot (1934), Brixhe (1996)
and Nicholas (1998) have all proposed that Tsakonian came about as a variety of the
Hellenistic Koine with a certain Doric colouring.
In addition to the well-known characteristics that prove the relationship of
Tsakonian with Laconian, all of which belong to the level of phonetics, such as the
preservation of the Doric α, e.g. [ˈmali] ‘apple’ < Doric µᾶλον, and the digamma (ϝ),
e.g. [ˈvane] ‘lamb’, cf. ancient Cretan ϝαρήν, the height dissimilation of vowel
sequences, e.g. [proˈδia] ‘sheepskin’, cf. MedG προβέα, the rhotacism of final /s/, e.g.
[kaˈko(r)] < AG κακός etc., Tzitzilis shows that the Laconian inheritance of
Tsakonian can be detected in many more of the dialect’s unusual characteristics, such
as the secondary aspirates, e.g. [aˈk
h
o] < AG ἀσκός and the characteristic change of
final [-o] to [-e] after a coronal consonant, e.g. [ˈθile] ‘friend’ < AG φίλος. The
presence of these characteristics in Late Antique inscriptions and in the Laconian
glosses of Hesychius, e.g. Ηesych. Lac. αἰκχούνα ‘shame’ = Attic αἰσχύνη (where κχ
represents [k
h
]), Hesych. Lac. πάσσαλερ ‘stake’ < AG πάσσαλος, shows that they are
inherited elements in the dialect rather than innovations. In fact, the second
characteristic can be ascribed to a more general tendency for fronting of back vowels
in Laconian which also includes the first stage of the iotacism of ancient upsilon (/u/ >
/ü).
However, inherited elements are not confined to the level of phonetics alone. At
the level of morphology, according to Tzitzilis, contrary to Aerts’s (1965:109)
assertion, verbal periphrases which led to the modern periphrastic verbal system of
Tsakonian can be found in Hesychius’s material, e.g. Hesych. Lac. ἐξηληµβώρ ‘to
perceive’ = Att. ἐξειληφώς (ἦν). Particularly archaic is the paradigm of the
mediopassive aorist in Tsakonian. For example, in the Tsakonian form ορά-µα Ι was
seen’, the ending -µα corresponds to the -µην of the middle aorist of athematic verbs
in the Attic dialect, e.g. ἐδό-µην ‘I was given’. In addition, the syncretism of the
perfect and the aorist led to the preservation in Tsakonian of aorists with labial or
velar stems that correspond to Doric perfects with voiced obstruents (in place of Attic
voiceless aspirates), for example Tsakonian εκρέβα [eˈkreva] I stole’ may be
compared with Messenian κεκλεβὼς [kekleˈbοs] (IG 5(I).1390.75), in contrast to Attic
κέκλοφα [kéklopha]. Finally, another characteristic archaism is the preservation of
fossilized case endings of the ancient dative in nouns denoting relatives and in oblique
forms of personal pronouns, e.g. gen./acc. µατερί ‘of/to the mother’, cf. AG dat. µητρί,
gen./acc. µοι ‘of/to me’, cf. AG dat. µοι etc., and the mixture of the person endings of
the ancient subjunctive and optative in the Tsakonian paradigm of the mediopassive
present subjunctive, for example the form να γραφούµα ‘I be written (pres. subj.)’ is
comparable with the ancient optative γραφοίµην, while the 3
rd
person singular να
γράφηται is derived from the ancient subjunctive γράφηται.
From Tzitzilis’s analysis of the phonological system of Tsakonian, I refer
indicatively to the presence of phonological rules that impose palatalization in many
more environments than in SMG and the other modern Greek dialects. More
specifically, in this dialect we find palatalization not only of the series of velar
consonants and the sonorants /n/ and /l/, as in many other dialects, but also of the
labials /p/ and /m/, and the dentals /t/ and /r/, as can be seen from the examples
[aγˈaci] αγάπη’, [ˈɲiγδale] αµύγδαλο’, [ciˈmu] ‘τιµώ’, [ˈʒizi] ρύζι etc., although
there are some dialect-internal differences.
Tzitzilis’s analysis of the morphological system of the dialect shows the increased
role of inflectional morphology in marking categories such as a) animacy: the
morpheme -οι is used for the plural of +animate masculines, e.g. αθρίπ-οι ‘people’,
υζοί ‘sons’, while -ου is used for the plural of -animates, e.g. τόπ-ου ‘places’, ακ
h
ού
‘vessels made from animal skin’, b) transitivity: the suffix -αΐχου is widely used to
mark transitive verbs, cf. the contrast between the verbs µοζού ‘feel pain’ and
µοζαΐχου ‘cause pain’, γερού ‘get old’ and γεραΐχου ‘cause someone to age’ etc., c)
imperfectivity, cf. the contrasts in aspect between the subjunctives να απρού-κ
h
-ου
‘spread (imperfective)’ and να απρού ‘spread (perfective)’, να ορ-ίν-ου ‘see
(imperfective)’ και να οράου ‘see (perfective)’ which are achieved by the addition of
morphemes marking imperfective aspect that follow the verb stem. To this we must
add that Tsakonian is the only modern Greek dialect that preserves morphologically
distinct endings in the monolectic paradigm of the subjunctive, in contrast to the
periphrastic paradigm of the indicative, which is formed with the auxiliary ‘to be’ and
the participle of the verb, e.g. ind. εµι ορού ‘I see’ vs. subj. να ορίνου / να οράου ‘I see
(impf./perf.), and ind. εµι ορούµενε I am seen’ vs. subj. να ορινούµα / να οραθού ‘I
am seen (impf./perf.)’.
As regards the syntactic system, a theoretically interesting feature is the syntactic
behaviour of clitic pronouns and the clitic auxiliary of verbal periphrases. In the
Tsakonian subdialect of the Propontis clitic pronouns are subject to the same
restrictions that apply generally in medieval Greek (cf. Mackridge 1993, Codoravdi &
Kiparsky 2004) and other eastern dialects of modern Greek (Tzitzilis under
publication b): If the verb is in initial position, the clitics follow it; otherwise they
precede the verb. This can be seen in (2):
(2) a) θωράκαΐ ν τον αγό (= είδαν τον τον λαγό)
saw.3
PL
DO
3
SG
the rabbit
‘They saw the rabbit’ (Costakis 1957: 118)
b) µα τ παρακαλέσ (= θα σε παρακαλέσω)
FUT
DO
2
SG
ask.1
SG
.
SUBJ
‘I will ask you’ (Costakis 1957: 96)
In Peloponnesian Tsakonian, they are now proclitic in almost all syntactic
environments, as can be seen from example (3):
(3) b) νι ενέντζε (= το έφερε)
DO
3
SG
brought.3sg
‘S/he brought it’ (Liosis 2007)
a) θα ναµ αλεί (= θα µας πει)
FUT
IO
1
PL
say.3
SG
.
SUBJ
‘S/he will tell us’ (Liosis 2007)
However, when a clitic pronoun and the clitic auxiliary co-occur in the same verb
phrase, the two clitics cluster together, and their position relative to each other differs
between the Peloponnesian and Propontis subdialects, as can be seen from example
(4):
(4) a) Propontis Tsakonian:
πουλώ τα-σι ένα γρόσ
selling.
M
.
SG
CLA
3.
PST
-
DO
3
PL
one piaster
‘He wanted to sell (was selling) them for one piaster’ (Costakis 1957:102)
b) Peloponnesian Tsakonian:
µ-εκι αούα α µαµού µοι
IO
1
SG
-
CLA
3
SG
.
PST
telling.
F
.
SG
the grandmother mine
‘My grandmother used to tell me’ (Costakis 1986,3: 394)
Also characteristic of Tsakonian syntax is the survival of the predicative participle
after verbs of sensing or starting, which is unique in modern Greek dialects, e.g. νι
οράκα σουρούµενε ‘I saw him crawling’, αρχινίε δρανίντου ‘s/he started to run’.
Finally, according to Tzitzilis, analysis of the Tsakonian vocabulary shows the
presence of a rich Doric stratum, which is particularly evident in the basic vocabulary,
and also in closed categories of grammatical words such as the personal and
demonstrative pronoun system. We can also detect the presence of successive strata
which result from contact with various Koines (Hellenistic, medieval, modern) as well
as with other languages, especially Turkish and the Romance languages. In contrast,
the Slavic element is minimal, which has consequences for the theories which have
been proposed concerning the character and intensity of contacts between Tsakonian
and Slavic.
3. Conclusions
The almost two centuries of continuous linguistic engagement with Tsakonian are
justified by the peculiarities of the dialect, which possesses numerous characteristics
that are unusual or unique, at least in comparison with the other modern Greek
dialects. These characteristics ultimately justify the need for a critical overview of
Tsakonian studies, as presented here, and also the increased interest of linguistics of
all different specializations, as they provide material that can be used to test modern
theoretical models at all levels of linguistic analysis. There are also some unresolved
issues which should be tackled by future research. These mainly concern the
Tsakonian subdialect of the Propontis, and are the result of the historical conditions
which shaped its emergence and its ultimate fate, and did not allow the collection of
more and better quality material in this dialect. Such problematic issues include the
formation of the future with the particle µα, which cannot be derived from the
grammaticalization of the auxiliary θέλω, as in SMG and most dialects, and the
presence of periphrastic structures for the subjunctive and imperative, which are
crosslinguistically rare for these moods, see Dahl (1985), Bybee & al. (1994, 104-
124), and which cannot easily be interpreted as the result of language decay. Finally, I
note the need for a modern grammar of Tsakonian, which should examine the dialect
within the framework of modern linguistic theory, and include a unified description of
the two Peloponnesian subdialects and of the subdialect of the Propontis.
Βιβλιογραφία
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Ιστορία της ελληνικής γλώσσας: από τις απαρχές ως τις µέρες µας. Translated by Alicia Villar Lecumberri
  • F R Adrados
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