>> Tsakonian is considered a descendant of a Doric dialect.
> What of Apulian Greek ('Griko', 15,000 speakers in 1994) and Calabria
> Greek (5,000 speakers, tally not dated)? Are they Doric or Attic?
Horrocks "Greek: a history of the Language and the speakers" discusses these
dialects on pages 304-6. He doesn't answer your question in simple terms,
but says, "the koineization process ... proceeded much as in other areas
where West Greek was long-established, producing popular spoken varieties
with a considerable dialect residue". So these dialects are Koine (i.e.
Attic/Ionic in origin) with traces of the old Doric etc flavouring them.
He points out that there was a prolonged Byzantine presence in South
Italy, which "consistently reinforced the use of written Greek and the
spoken standard, both of which served to keep the local vernaculars in touch
with the mainstream of medieval Greek development."
After 1071 (break with Byzantium) there was a gradual decline, though
the really sharp decline didn't happen till the 18th and 19th centuries.
Interestingly, some of the features of these dialects are preservations
not of Doric, but of Koine, which have been lost in other dialects of modern
Greek.
Peter