Ianthi Tsimpli
2017
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Peristeri, Eleni; Sorace, Antonella; Tsapkini, Kyrana
Language interference and inhibition in early and late successive bilingualism Journal Article
In: Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, vol. 21, no. 5, pp. 1-26, 2017.
@article{Tsimpli2017f,
title = {Language interference and inhibition in early and late successive bilingualism},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Peristeri and Antonella Sorace and Kyrana Tsapkini},
doi = {10.1017/S1366728917000372},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-10-11},
urldate = {2017-10-11},
journal = {Bilingualism: Language and Cognition},
volume = {21},
number = {5},
pages = {1-26},
abstract = {The present study explores whether age of onset of exposure to the second language affects interference resolution at the grammatical gender level and whether cognitive functions contribute to interference resolution. Early and late successive Serbian–Greek bilinguals living in the second language context, along with monolinguals, performed a picture-word interference naming task in a single-language context and a non-verbal inhibition task. We found that gender interference from the first language was only present in late successive bilinguals. Early bilinguals exhibited no interference from the grammatical gender of their mother tongue and showed more enhanced inhibitory abilities than the rest of the groups in the non-verbal task. The distinct sizes of interference from the grammatical gender of the first language across the two bilingual groups is explained by early successive bilinguals’ more enhanced domain-general inhibitory processes in the resolution of between-language conflict at the grammatical gender level relative to late successive bilinguals.
},
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The present study explores whether age of onset of exposure to the second language affects interference resolution at the grammatical gender level and whether cognitive functions contribute to interference resolution. Early and late successive Serbian–Greek bilinguals living in the second language context, along with monolinguals, performed a picture-word interference naming task in a single-language context and a non-verbal inhibition task. We found that gender interference from the first language was only present in late successive bilinguals. Early bilinguals exhibited no interference from the grammatical gender of their mother tongue and showed more enhanced inhibitory abilities than the rest of the groups in the non-verbal task. The distinct sizes of interference from the grammatical gender of the first language across the two bilingual groups is explained by early successive bilinguals’ more enhanced domain-general inhibitory processes in the resolution of between-language conflict at the grammatical gender level relative to late successive bilinguals.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Rothou, Kyriakoula M
Biliteracy and reading ability in children who learn Greek as a second language Journal Article
In: International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, vol. 23, no. 8, pp. 1-15, 2017.
@article{Tsimpli2017g,
title = {Biliteracy and reading ability in children who learn Greek as a second language},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Kyriakoula M Rothou},
doi = {10.1080/13670050.2017.1386614},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-10-11},
urldate = {2017-10-11},
journal = {International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism},
volume = {23},
number = {8},
pages = {1-15},
abstract = {The differences and similarities in the word recognition and reading comprehension skills of monoliterate Albanian-Greek (ML2), biliterate Albanian-Greek (BL2) and monolingual (L1) children in grades 3–6 were examined in two cross-sectional studies. Participants completed standardized and experimental tasks measuring cognitive, oral language and reading skills. The first study explored the effect of biliteracy on Greek word recognition taking into account the impact of oral expressive vocabulary in that language. 24 BL2 and 66 ML2 were compared to 78 L1 speakers in visual word recognition. It was revealed that the two groups of bilingual children differed in word recognition. In addition, it demonstrated that oral proficiency in the second language can play a key role in second language word reading. Study 2 examined the differences in reading comprehension skills of 21ML2, 13BL2 and 19L1 children. ML2 children performed proficiently on text comprehension as their monolingual peers. However biliterate Albanian-Greek children had poorer performance than their L1 peers.
},
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The differences and similarities in the word recognition and reading comprehension skills of monoliterate Albanian-Greek (ML2), biliterate Albanian-Greek (BL2) and monolingual (L1) children in grades 3–6 were examined in two cross-sectional studies. Participants completed standardized and experimental tasks measuring cognitive, oral language and reading skills. The first study explored the effect of biliteracy on Greek word recognition taking into account the impact of oral expressive vocabulary in that language. 24 BL2 and 66 ML2 were compared to 78 L1 speakers in visual word recognition. It was revealed that the two groups of bilingual children differed in word recognition. In addition, it demonstrated that oral proficiency in the second language can play a key role in second language word reading. Study 2 examined the differences in reading comprehension skills of 21ML2, 13BL2 and 19L1 children. ML2 children performed proficiently on text comprehension as their monolingual peers. However biliterate Albanian-Greek children had poorer performance than their L1 peers.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Peristeri, Eleni; Sorace, Antonella; Tsapkini, Kyrana
Language interference and inhibition in early and late successive bilingualism Journal Article
In: Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, vol. 21, no. 5, pp. 1009-1034, 2017.
@article{Tsimpli2017h,
title = {Language interference and inhibition in early and late successive bilingualism},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Peristeri and Antonella Sorace and Kyrana Tsapkini},
doi = {10.17863/CAM.26081},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-10-11},
urldate = {2017-10-11},
journal = {Bilingualism: Language and Cognition},
volume = {21},
number = {5},
pages = {1009-1034},
abstract = {Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 The present study explores whether age of onset of exposure to the second language affects interference resolution at the grammatical gender level and whether cognitive functions contribute to interference resolution. Early and late successive Serbian–Greek bilinguals living in the second language context, along with monolinguals, performed a picture-word interference naming task in a single-language context and a non-verbal inhibition task. We found that gender interference from the first language was only present in late successive bilinguals. Early bilinguals exhibited no interference from the grammatical gender of their mother tongue and showed more enhanced inhibitory abilities than the rest of the groups in the non-verbal task. The distinct sizes of interference from the grammatical gender of the first language across the two bilingual groups is explained by early successive bilinguals’ more enhanced domain-general inhibitory processes in the resolution of between-language conflict at the grammatical gender level relative to late successive bilinguals.
},
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 The present study explores whether age of onset of exposure to the second language affects interference resolution at the grammatical gender level and whether cognitive functions contribute to interference resolution. Early and late successive Serbian–Greek bilinguals living in the second language context, along with monolinguals, performed a picture-word interference naming task in a single-language context and a non-verbal inhibition task. We found that gender interference from the first language was only present in late successive bilinguals. Early bilinguals exhibited no interference from the grammatical gender of their mother tongue and showed more enhanced inhibitory abilities than the rest of the groups in the non-verbal task. The distinct sizes of interference from the grammatical gender of the first language across the two bilingual groups is explained by early successive bilinguals’ more enhanced domain-general inhibitory processes in the resolution of between-language conflict at the grammatical gender level relative to late successive bilinguals.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Mastropavlou, Maria
Feature interpretability in L2 acquisition and SLI: Greek clitics and determiners Book Chapter
In: pp. 142-183, Lawrence Erlbaum, 2017, ISBN: 9781315085340.
@inbook{Tsimpli2017i,
title = {Feature interpretability in L2 acquisition and SLI: Greek clitics and determiners},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Maria Mastropavlou},
doi = {10.4324/9781315085340-6},
isbn = {9781315085340},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-09-25},
urldate = {2017-09-25},
pages = {142-183},
publisher = {Lawrence Erlbaum},
abstract = {This chapter evaluates a theory of learnability based on differences in the interpretability status of formal features. It presents the basic assumptions on which the hypothesis of the differences in the learnability status of interpretable and uninterpretable features is built. The chapter also presents information about the subjects who participated in this study, namely, child and adult L2 learners of Greek and Greek SLI children. It presents new data from six Greek SLI children of two different age groups, concentrates on their use of possessive genitive and accusative clitics, as well as of the definite and the indefinite article. Turning to SLI grammars, the notion of (in)accessibility of uninterpretable features refers to problems in the appropriate analysis of the input, due to the incomplete or deficient representation of the functional lexicon. The correlation in the use of third-person clitics and the definite article is also supported by the younger group of child L2 learners and by adult L2 learners.},
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This chapter evaluates a theory of learnability based on differences in the interpretability status of formal features. It presents the basic assumptions on which the hypothesis of the differences in the learnability status of interpretable and uninterpretable features is built. The chapter also presents information about the subjects who participated in this study, namely, child and adult L2 learners of Greek and Greek SLI children. It presents new data from six Greek SLI children of two different age groups, concentrates on their use of possessive genitive and accusative clitics, as well as of the definite and the indefinite article. Turning to SLI grammars, the notion of (in)accessibility of uninterpretable features refers to problems in the appropriate analysis of the input, due to the incomplete or deficient representation of the functional lexicon. The correlation in the use of third-person clitics and the definite article is also supported by the younger group of child L2 learners and by adult L2 learners.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Kaltsa, Maria; Argyri, Froso
The development of gender assignment and agreement in English-Greek and German-Greek bilingual children Journal Article
In: Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, vol. 9, no. 6, 2017.
@article{Tsimpli2017j,
title = {The development of gender assignment and agreement in English-Greek and German-Greek bilingual children},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Maria Kaltsa and Froso Argyri},
doi = {10.1075/lab.16033.kal},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-09-05},
urldate = {2017-09-05},
journal = {Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism},
volume = {9},
number = {6},
abstract = {The aim of this experimental study is to examine the development of Greek gender in bilingual English-Greek and German-Greek children. Four gender production tasks were designed, two targeting gender assignment eliciting determiners and two targeting gender agreement eliciting predicate adjectives for real and novel nouns. Participant performance was assessed in relation to whether the ‘other’ language was a gender language or not (English vs. German) along with the role of the bilinguals’ Greek vocabulary knowledge and language input. The results are argued to contribute significantly to disentangling the role of crosslinguistic influence in gender assignment and agreement by bringing together a variety of input measures such as early and current amount of exposure to Greek, the role of area of residence (i.e. whether Greek is the minority or the majority language), the effect of maternal education and the amount of exposure to Greek in a school setting.
},
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The aim of this experimental study is to examine the development of Greek gender in bilingual English-Greek and German-Greek children. Four gender production tasks were designed, two targeting gender assignment eliciting determiners and two targeting gender agreement eliciting predicate adjectives for real and novel nouns. Participant performance was assessed in relation to whether the ‘other’ language was a gender language or not (English vs. German) along with the role of the bilinguals’ Greek vocabulary knowledge and language input. The results are argued to contribute significantly to disentangling the role of crosslinguistic influence in gender assignment and agreement by bringing together a variety of input measures such as early and current amount of exposure to Greek, the role of area of residence (i.e. whether Greek is the minority or the majority language), the effect of maternal education and the amount of exposure to Greek in a school setting.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Andreou, Maria
Aspectual distinctions in the narratives of bilingual children Journal Article
In: International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, vol. 55, no. 3, pp. 305-324, 2017.
@article{Tsimpli2017k,
title = {Aspectual distinctions in the narratives of bilingual children},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Maria Andreou},
doi = {10.1515/iral-2017-0111},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-09-01},
urldate = {2017-09-01},
journal = {International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching},
volume = {55},
number = {3},
pages = {305-324},
abstract = {This study investigates the production of perfective and imperfective aspect in Greek by Greek-German and Greek-English bilingual children. Participants produced retellings of narratives (ENNI, Schneider et al. 2006), which were then coded for the use of grammatical aspect, perfective and imperfective, as well as for lexical and grammatical aspect combinations. Ninety children, 8 to 12 years old, participated in the study: thirty Greek-German bilinguals, thirty Greek-English bilinguals and thirty Greek monolinguals. Although German and English differ in the linguistic expression of aspect in that German lacks morphological aspect, while English marks the +/–progressive distinction, our results reveal that the two bilingual groups did not differ in their preference for perfective aspect. Perfective aspect was also preferred by the Greek monolingual children. Nevertheless, monolingual and Greek-German bilingual children produced fewer perfective verbs compared to the Greek-English children. Finally, all three groups preferred to use perfective aspect with accomplishment/achievement predicates, whereas a difference between the three groups is found in the use of imperfective aspect with stative, activity and semelfactive predicates. This provides partial support to theories which argue for lexical aspect guiding morphological aspect marking in developing grammars.
},
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This study investigates the production of perfective and imperfective aspect in Greek by Greek-German and Greek-English bilingual children. Participants produced retellings of narratives (ENNI, Schneider et al. 2006), which were then coded for the use of grammatical aspect, perfective and imperfective, as well as for lexical and grammatical aspect combinations. Ninety children, 8 to 12 years old, participated in the study: thirty Greek-German bilinguals, thirty Greek-English bilinguals and thirty Greek monolinguals. Although German and English differ in the linguistic expression of aspect in that German lacks morphological aspect, while English marks the +/–progressive distinction, our results reveal that the two bilingual groups did not differ in their preference for perfective aspect. Perfective aspect was also preferred by the Greek monolingual children. Nevertheless, monolingual and Greek-German bilingual children produced fewer perfective verbs compared to the Greek-English children. Finally, all three groups preferred to use perfective aspect with accomplishment/achievement predicates, whereas a difference between the three groups is found in the use of imperfective aspect with stative, activity and semelfactive predicates. This provides partial support to theories which argue for lexical aspect guiding morphological aspect marking in developing grammars.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Egger, Evelyn; Hulk, Aafke
Crosslinguistic influence in the discovery of gender: the case of Greek–Dutch bilingual children Journal Article
In: Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 1-16, 2017.
@article{Tsimpli2017l,
title = {Crosslinguistic influence in the discovery of gender: the case of Greek–Dutch bilingual children},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Evelyn Egger and Aafke Hulk},
doi = {10.1017/S1366728917000207},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-07-07},
urldate = {2017-07-07},
journal = {Bilingualism: Language and Cognition},
volume = {21},
number = {4},
pages = {1-16},
abstract = {This study investigates the acquisition of grammatical gender in both languages of 21 simultaneous Greek–Dutch bilingual children living in the Netherlands. Greek and Dutch stand on the two opposite sides in terms of frequency and transparency of gender cues. Consequently, monolingual acquisition of gender in Greek is precocious with few overgeneralizations of the default value, neuter, in early stages. In contrast, monolingual acquisition of gender in Dutch is very late with errors in neuter nouns persisting up to the age of 7. Simultaneous Greek–Dutch bilingual children present an interesting test case of crosslinguistic influence in the form of acceleration (Greek affecting Dutch) or delay (Dutch affecting Greek). Children were tested on gender marking on determiners and adjectives in production and grammaticality judgment tasks. Input measures of Greek and Dutch and lexical skills were also considered. Results point to crosslinguistic influence in the form of acceleration of gender discovery in Dutch.},
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This study investigates the acquisition of grammatical gender in both languages of 21 simultaneous Greek–Dutch bilingual children living in the Netherlands. Greek and Dutch stand on the two opposite sides in terms of frequency and transparency of gender cues. Consequently, monolingual acquisition of gender in Greek is precocious with few overgeneralizations of the default value, neuter, in early stages. In contrast, monolingual acquisition of gender in Dutch is very late with errors in neuter nouns persisting up to the age of 7. Simultaneous Greek–Dutch bilingual children present an interesting test case of crosslinguistic influence in the form of acceleration (Greek affecting Dutch) or delay (Dutch affecting Greek). Children were tested on gender marking on determiners and adjectives in production and grammaticality judgment tasks. Input measures of Greek and Dutch and lexical skills were also considered. Results point to crosslinguistic influence in the form of acceleration of gender discovery in Dutch.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Pontikas, George; Marinis, Theodoros
Language Production and Comprehension in Bilingual SLI: Evidence from Complex Morphosyntactic Structures Bachelor Thesis
2017.
@bachelorthesis{Tsimpli2017m,
title = {Language Production and Comprehension in Bilingual SLI: Evidence from Complex Morphosyntactic Structures},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and George Pontikas and Theodoros Marinis},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-06-01},
urldate = {2017-06-01},
journal = {University of Reading Language Studies Working Papers},
volume = {8},
pages = {36-46},
abstract = {The last decade has seen an increase in the number of published studies in bilingual children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) but the latter have focused mainly on language production. A substantially smaller body of research on comprehension primarily addresses the question whether children with SLI show a similar profile to bilingual typically developing (TD) children. However, research comparing bilingual and monolingual children with SLI remains comparatively limited. Moreover, this is also the case with research into language comprehension in bilingual children with SLI in isolation or compared to production within the same population. This paper outlines the background to Specific Language Impairment within a bilingual setting and the rationale for studying bilingual children with SLI as evidence for/against theories of language and language impairment. It further discusses directions for future research in order to bridge the gaps in the existing literature and a presentation of a series of morphosyntactic structures which have been described as “complex”.
},
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pubstate = {published},
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The last decade has seen an increase in the number of published studies in bilingual children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) but the latter have focused mainly on language production. A substantially smaller body of research on comprehension primarily addresses the question whether children with SLI show a similar profile to bilingual typically developing (TD) children. However, research comparing bilingual and monolingual children with SLI remains comparatively limited. Moreover, this is also the case with research into language comprehension in bilingual children with SLI in isolation or compared to production within the same population. This paper outlines the background to Specific Language Impairment within a bilingual setting and the rationale for studying bilingual children with SLI as evidence for/against theories of language and language impairment. It further discusses directions for future research in order to bridge the gaps in the existing literature and a presentation of a series of morphosyntactic structures which have been described as “complex”.
Tsimpli, Ianthi
Multilingual education for multilingual speakers Journal Article
In: 2017.
@article{Tsimpli2017n,
title = {Multilingual education for multilingual speakers},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli},
doi = {10.17863/CAM.9803},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-05-19},
urldate = {2017-05-19},
abstract = {In recent years, bilingualism and multilingualism have become a central concern for local and government authorities in the UK as around 1,700,000 primary and secondary school pupils in England speak English as an Additional Language. The Department for Education as well as charity organizations, have declared an active interest in research and dissemination of research findings to the wider public regarding bilingual children growing up and receiving education in the UK schools. Most of the relevant research reports, advice and guidelines to practitioners and parents concern school-age children from primary through to secondary schools. There are also government initiatives or charity organizations concerned with preschool childcare and education for children for whom English is not the home language. Specifically, the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework, effective from September 2014, defines three ‘prime’areas as crucial for the framework’s principles: a) communication and language, b) physical development and c) personal, social and emotional development. As communication and language are the first of these prime areas in the framework, the role of multilingualism and the implementation of the framework for children with English as an additional language (EAL) is of direct relevance to the framework. EAL children are specifically mentioned in § 1.7, reproduced below:
},
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pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
In recent years, bilingualism and multilingualism have become a central concern for local and government authorities in the UK as around 1,700,000 primary and secondary school pupils in England speak English as an Additional Language. The Department for Education as well as charity organizations, have declared an active interest in research and dissemination of research findings to the wider public regarding bilingual children growing up and receiving education in the UK schools. Most of the relevant research reports, advice and guidelines to practitioners and parents concern school-age children from primary through to secondary schools. There are also government initiatives or charity organizations concerned with preschool childcare and education for children for whom English is not the home language. Specifically, the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework, effective from September 2014, defines three ‘prime’areas as crucial for the framework’s principles: a) communication and language, b) physical development and c) personal, social and emotional development. As communication and language are the first of these prime areas in the framework, the role of multilingualism and the implementation of the framework for children with English as an additional language (EAL) is of direct relevance to the framework. EAL children are specifically mentioned in § 1.7, reproduced below:
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Cilibrasi, Luca; Jirankova, Lucie
Perception of inflectional morphology in English L2 speakers with a rich L1 Conference
2017.
@conference{Tsimpli2017o,
title = {Perception of inflectional morphology in English L2 speakers with a rich L1},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Luca Cilibrasi and Lucie Jirankova},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-02-16},
urldate = {2017-02-16},
abstract = {1. Background. English inflections are realised in accordance with a specific morphophonological rule: they are voiced when applied to a stem ending in a voiced consonant and they are devoiced when following a stem with a devoiced consonant. For instance, "kill" becomes "killed", pronounced /kɪ:ld/ when inflected in the past, and "ask" becomes "asked", pronounced /ɑ:skt/ when inflected in the past. Using this rule it is possible to create non-words that contain potential bound morphemes, such as /vʌ:ld/, and non-words that end in phonemes that can have an inflectional value, but not in that specific phonological context, such as /vʌ:lt/ Previous work has shown that monolingual English speakers are sensitive to the presence of bound morphology in non-words, which means that they are sensitive to the morphosyntactic properties of words also in the absence of semantics. For instance, Post et al. (2008) showed that participants take longer to discriminate non-words that respect the morphophonological rules of regular English inflection than non-words that are based on non-productive rules of English morphophonology. In previous work (Cilibrasi, 2016) we showed that non-words with potential bound morphology take longer to be discriminated than non-words that do not contain potential bound morphology. These results suggest that a form of morpheme stripping takes place (Pinker & Ullman, 2002), and also that it takes place in the absence of meaning. In other words, it suggests that speakers look for the presence of bound morphology in words endings independently of the identity of the verb. The present study used the same methodology of Cilibrasi (2016), but the subjects investigated in this occasion were adult second language learners. This study investigated the perception of bound morphemes in second language learners of English having Czech as L1. Results show that second language speakers of English with Czech as L1 are sensitive to the presence of inflectional morphology very early on, and the pattern of performance does not change substantially with additional proficiency.
},
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1. Background. English inflections are realised in accordance with a specific morphophonological rule: they are voiced when applied to a stem ending in a voiced consonant and they are devoiced when following a stem with a devoiced consonant. For instance, "kill" becomes "killed", pronounced /kɪ:ld/ when inflected in the past, and "ask" becomes "asked", pronounced /ɑ:skt/ when inflected in the past. Using this rule it is possible to create non-words that contain potential bound morphemes, such as /vʌ:ld/, and non-words that end in phonemes that can have an inflectional value, but not in that specific phonological context, such as /vʌ:lt/ Previous work has shown that monolingual English speakers are sensitive to the presence of bound morphology in non-words, which means that they are sensitive to the morphosyntactic properties of words also in the absence of semantics. For instance, Post et al. (2008) showed that participants take longer to discriminate non-words that respect the morphophonological rules of regular English inflection than non-words that are based on non-productive rules of English morphophonology. In previous work (Cilibrasi, 2016) we showed that non-words with potential bound morphology take longer to be discriminated than non-words that do not contain potential bound morphology. These results suggest that a form of morpheme stripping takes place (Pinker & Ullman, 2002), and also that it takes place in the absence of meaning. In other words, it suggests that speakers look for the presence of bound morphology in words endings independently of the identity of the verb. The present study used the same methodology of Cilibrasi (2016), but the subjects investigated in this occasion were adult second language learners. This study investigated the perception of bound morphemes in second language learners of English having Czech as L1. Results show that second language speakers of English with Czech as L1 are sensitive to the presence of inflectional morphology very early on, and the pattern of performance does not change substantially with additional proficiency.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Baldimtsi, Eleni; Peristeri, Eleni; Nicolopoulou, Ageliki
Bilingual Children with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder: Evidence From Oral Narratives and Non-verbal Executive Function Tasks Conference
Cascadilla Press, 2017.
@conference{Tsimpli2017p,
title = {Bilingual Children with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder: Evidence From Oral Narratives and Non-verbal Executive Function Tasks},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Baldimtsi and Eleni Peristeri and Ageliki Nicolopoulou},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-01-01},
urldate = {2017-01-01},
pages = {18-31},
publisher = {Cascadilla Press},
abstract = {This study investigated possible compensatory effects of bilingualism on ASD in language and non-verbal cognition. Six bilingual children with ASD were compared with 9 bilingual and 9 monolingual controls (Mean age: 9;8) with or without ASD. Children narrated a story to a multi-episode picture sequence that was analysed using story structure and appropriate referential forms. An online global-local attention task assessed children’s non-verbal inhibition and attention. The results partly supported our hypothesis. In the verbal task, TD bilinguals used the least number of ambiguous forms during narration, and bilinguals with ASD outperformed their monolingual controls. Furthermore, bilinguals with or without ASD and their controls used more story grammar elements than TD monolinguals. In the non-verbal task, children with ASD performed better in the local condition while children without ASD in the global condition. Thus, bilingualism seems to improve the verbal abilities of children with ASD more than their non-verbal abilities.
},
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}
This study investigated possible compensatory effects of bilingualism on ASD in language and non-verbal cognition. Six bilingual children with ASD were compared with 9 bilingual and 9 monolingual controls (Mean age: 9;8) with or without ASD. Children narrated a story to a multi-episode picture sequence that was analysed using story structure and appropriate referential forms. An online global-local attention task assessed children’s non-verbal inhibition and attention. The results partly supported our hypothesis. In the verbal task, TD bilinguals used the least number of ambiguous forms during narration, and bilinguals with ASD outperformed their monolingual controls. Furthermore, bilinguals with or without ASD and their controls used more story grammar elements than TD monolinguals. In the non-verbal task, children with ASD performed better in the local condition while children without ASD in the global condition. Thus, bilingualism seems to improve the verbal abilities of children with ASD more than their non-verbal abilities.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Kaltsa, Maria; Prentza, Alexandra
The Acquisition of Gender by Greek-Albanian Bilingual Children: the role of input and bi/monolingual schooling Conference
2017.
@conference{Tsimpli2017q,
title = {The Acquisition of Gender by Greek-Albanian Bilingual Children: the role of input and bi/monolingual schooling},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Maria Kaltsa and Alexandra Prentza},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-01-01},
urldate = {2017-01-01},
pages = {315-326},
abstract = {The aim of this study is to examine the development of gender assignment and gender agreement in bilingual Greek-Albanian children through the exploitation of gender cues on the noun ending in real and novel nouns. To this end, four gender tasks were designed, two targeting gender assignment and two gender agreement for both real and novel nouns. Performance is investigated in relation to the role of the bilingual’s vocabulary knowledge in Greek as well as the role of input factors including the monolingual/bilingual school contexts and the role of parental education as a proxy for socioeconomic status (SES). To test the bilingual acquisition of grammatical gender in Greek, 150 bilingual children aged 8 to 12 years old residing in Greece and in Albania, along with 57 Greek monolingual children conducted the four gender tasks targeting gender assignment and gender agreement for real and novel nouns. Background information was collected on a number of input related variables, such as age of onset of exposure to L2, home language strategies, literacy development in the L1 and L2 and language preferences for oral tasks, with the use of questionnaires administered to parents and to children. Additionally, the bilingual’s lexical abilities were measured by means of a standardized expressive vocabulary test in Greek (Vogindroukas et al., 2009) and a similar vocabulary test in Albanian (Kapia & Kananaj, 2013). The results show a strong interaction among the bilinguals’ performance and their Greek vocabulary development, the amount of oral Greek input and type of schooling they are attending. The novelty of this work is the examination of the effect of schooling in relation not to general academic achievement but in relation to the development of a specific grammatical feature category gender.
},
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The aim of this study is to examine the development of gender assignment and gender agreement in bilingual Greek-Albanian children through the exploitation of gender cues on the noun ending in real and novel nouns. To this end, four gender tasks were designed, two targeting gender assignment and two gender agreement for both real and novel nouns. Performance is investigated in relation to the role of the bilingual’s vocabulary knowledge in Greek as well as the role of input factors including the monolingual/bilingual school contexts and the role of parental education as a proxy for socioeconomic status (SES). To test the bilingual acquisition of grammatical gender in Greek, 150 bilingual children aged 8 to 12 years old residing in Greece and in Albania, along with 57 Greek monolingual children conducted the four gender tasks targeting gender assignment and gender agreement for real and novel nouns. Background information was collected on a number of input related variables, such as age of onset of exposure to L2, home language strategies, literacy development in the L1 and L2 and language preferences for oral tasks, with the use of questionnaires administered to parents and to children. Additionally, the bilingual’s lexical abilities were measured by means of a standardized expressive vocabulary test in Greek (Vogindroukas et al., 2009) and a similar vocabulary test in Albanian (Kapia & Kananaj, 2013). The results show a strong interaction among the bilinguals’ performance and their Greek vocabulary development, the amount of oral Greek input and type of schooling they are attending. The novelty of this work is the examination of the effect of schooling in relation not to general academic achievement but in relation to the development of a specific grammatical feature category gender.
2016
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Cunnings, Ian; Fotiadou, Georgia
Anaphora Resolution and Reanalysis During L2 Sentence Processing Journal Article
In: Studies in Second Language Acquisition, vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 1-32, 2016.
@article{Tsimpli2016b,
title = {Anaphora Resolution and Reanalysis During L2 Sentence Processing},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Ian Cunnings and Georgia Fotiadou},
doi = {10.1017/S0272263116000292},
year = {2016},
date = {2016-08-03},
urldate = {2016-08-03},
journal = {Studies in Second Language Acquisition},
volume = {1},
number = {4},
pages = {1-32},
abstract = {In a visual world paradigm study, we manipulated gender congruence between a subject pronoun and two antecedents to investigate whether second language (L2) learners with a null subject first language (L1) acquire and process overt subject pronouns in a nonnull subject L2 in a nativelike way. We also investigated whether L2 speakers revise an initial interpretation assigned to an ambiguous pronoun when information in the visual context subsequently biased against it. Our results indicated both L1 English speakers and Greek L2 English speakers rapidly used gender information to guide pronoun resolution. Both groups also preferentially coindexed ambiguous pronouns to a sentence subject and current discourse topic, despite the fact that overt subject pronouns in the learners’ L1 index a topic shift. We also observed that L2 English speakers were less likely to revise their initial interpretation than L1 English speakers. These results indicate that L2 speakers from a null subject background can acquire the interpretive preferences of overt pronouns in a nonnull subject L2. The eye-movement data indicate that anaphora processing can become qualitatively similar in native and nonnative speakers in the domain of subject pronoun resolution, but indicate reanalysis may cause difficulty during L2 processing.
},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
In a visual world paradigm study, we manipulated gender congruence between a subject pronoun and two antecedents to investigate whether second language (L2) learners with a null subject first language (L1) acquire and process overt subject pronouns in a nonnull subject L2 in a nativelike way. We also investigated whether L2 speakers revise an initial interpretation assigned to an ambiguous pronoun when information in the visual context subsequently biased against it. Our results indicated both L1 English speakers and Greek L2 English speakers rapidly used gender information to guide pronoun resolution. Both groups also preferentially coindexed ambiguous pronouns to a sentence subject and current discourse topic, despite the fact that overt subject pronouns in the learners’ L1 index a topic shift. We also observed that L2 English speakers were less likely to revise their initial interpretation than L1 English speakers. These results indicate that L2 speakers from a null subject background can acquire the interpretive preferences of overt pronouns in a nonnull subject L2. The eye-movement data indicate that anaphora processing can become qualitatively similar in native and nonnative speakers in the domain of subject pronoun resolution, but indicate reanalysis may cause difficulty during L2 processing.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Rothman, Jason; y Cabo, Diego Pascual
Formal linguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition: Bridges for pedagogically oriented research Book Chapter
In: pp. 13-26, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2016.
@inbook{Tsimpli2016,
title = {Formal linguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition: Bridges for pedagogically oriented research},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Jason Rothman and Diego Pascual y Cabo},
doi = {10.1075/sibil.49.02rot},
year = {2016},
date = {2016-07-11},
urldate = {2016-07-11},
pages = {13-26},
publisher = {John Benjamins Publishing Company},
abstract = {The goal of this chapter is to lay out the central themes of heritage language acquisition research adopting a formal/theoretical linguistic perspective. Specifically, we aim to provide a detailed discussion of the nature of heritage language grammars. In doing so, we will address the debates on how to explain heritage speaker competence differences from monolingual baselines and more. This chapter will not be limited to discussions of Spanish as a heritage language, but rather will highlight the important role that Spanish has played and will continue to play in the development of heritage language acquisition studies. Finally, we will offer some comments/insights on how the information covered regarding the formal linguistic properties of heritage speaker knowledge should be considered for and implemented in heritage language pedagogies and thus dealing with heritage speakers in the classroom setting.
},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inbook}
}
The goal of this chapter is to lay out the central themes of heritage language acquisition research adopting a formal/theoretical linguistic perspective. Specifically, we aim to provide a detailed discussion of the nature of heritage language grammars. In doing so, we will address the debates on how to explain heritage speaker competence differences from monolingual baselines and more. This chapter will not be limited to discussions of Spanish as a heritage language, but rather will highlight the important role that Spanish has played and will continue to play in the development of heritage language acquisition studies. Finally, we will offer some comments/insights on how the information covered regarding the formal linguistic properties of heritage speaker knowledge should be considered for and implemented in heritage language pedagogies and thus dealing with heritage speakers in the classroom setting.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Kaltsa, Maria; Marinis, Theodoros; Stavrou, Melita
Processing Coordinate Subject-Verb Agreement in L1 and L2 Greek Journal Article
In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 7, no. 347, 2016.
@article{nokey,
title = {Processing Coordinate Subject-Verb Agreement in L1 and L2 Greek},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Maria Kaltsa and Theodoros Marinis and Melita Stavrou},
doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00648},
year = {2016},
date = {2016-05-09},
urldate = {2016-05-09},
journal = {Frontiers in Psychology},
volume = {7},
number = {347},
abstract = {The present study examines the processing of subject-verb (SV) number agreement with coordinate subjects in preverbal and postverbal positions in Greek. Greek is a language with morphological number marked on nominal and verbal elements. Coordinate SV agreement however is special in Greek as it is sensitive to the coordinate subject’s position: when preverbal, the verb is marked for plural while when postverbal the verb can be in the singular. We conducted two experiments, an acceptability judgment task with adult monolinguals as a pre-study (Experiment 1) and a self-paced reading task as the main study (Experiment 2) in order to obtain acceptance as well as processing data. Forty adult monolingual speakers of Greek participated in Experiment 1 and a hundred and forty one in Experiment 2. Seventy one children participated in Experiment 2: 30 Albanian-Greek sequential bilingual children and 41 Greek monolingual children aged 10 to 12 years. The adult data in Experiment 1 establish the difference in acceptability between singular VPs in SV and VS constructions reaffirming our hypothesis. Meanwhile, the adult data in Experiment 2 show that plural verbs accelerate processing regardless of subject position. The child online data show that sequential bilingual children have longer reading times (RTs) compared to the age-matched monolingual control group. However, both child groups follow a similar processing pattern in both preverbal and postverbal constructions showing longer RTs immediately after a singular verb when the subject was preverbal indicating a grammaticality effect. In the postverbal coordinate subject sentences, both child groups showed longer RTs on the first subject following the plural verb due to the temporary number mismatch between the verb and the first subject. This effect was resolved in monolingual children but was still present at the end of the sentence for bilingual children indicating difficulties to reanalyze and integrate information. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that (a) 10-12 year-old sequential bilingual children are sensitive to number agreement in SV coordinate constructions parsing sentences in the same way as monolingual children even though their vocabulary abilities are lower than that of age-matched monolingual peers and (b) bilinguals are slower in processing overall.
},
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The present study examines the processing of subject-verb (SV) number agreement with coordinate subjects in preverbal and postverbal positions in Greek. Greek is a language with morphological number marked on nominal and verbal elements. Coordinate SV agreement however is special in Greek as it is sensitive to the coordinate subject’s position: when preverbal, the verb is marked for plural while when postverbal the verb can be in the singular. We conducted two experiments, an acceptability judgment task with adult monolinguals as a pre-study (Experiment 1) and a self-paced reading task as the main study (Experiment 2) in order to obtain acceptance as well as processing data. Forty adult monolingual speakers of Greek participated in Experiment 1 and a hundred and forty one in Experiment 2. Seventy one children participated in Experiment 2: 30 Albanian-Greek sequential bilingual children and 41 Greek monolingual children aged 10 to 12 years. The adult data in Experiment 1 establish the difference in acceptability between singular VPs in SV and VS constructions reaffirming our hypothesis. Meanwhile, the adult data in Experiment 2 show that plural verbs accelerate processing regardless of subject position. The child online data show that sequential bilingual children have longer reading times (RTs) compared to the age-matched monolingual control group. However, both child groups follow a similar processing pattern in both preverbal and postverbal constructions showing longer RTs immediately after a singular verb when the subject was preverbal indicating a grammaticality effect. In the postverbal coordinate subject sentences, both child groups showed longer RTs on the first subject following the plural verb due to the temporary number mismatch between the verb and the first subject. This effect was resolved in monolingual children but was still present at the end of the sentence for bilingual children indicating difficulties to reanalyze and integrate information. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that (a) 10-12 year-old sequential bilingual children are sensitive to number agreement in SV coordinate constructions parsing sentences in the same way as monolingual children even though their vocabulary abilities are lower than that of age-matched monolingual peers and (b) bilinguals are slower in processing overall.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Peristeri, Eleni; Andreou, Maria
Narrative production in monolingual and bilingual children with specific language impairment Journal Article
In: Applied Psycholinguistics, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 195-216, 2016.
@article{Tsimpli2016c,
title = {Narrative production in monolingual and bilingual children with specific language impairment},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Peristeri and Maria Andreou},
doi = {10.1017/S0142716415000478},
year = {2016},
date = {2016-01-01},
urldate = {2016-01-01},
journal = {Applied Psycholinguistics},
volume = {37},
number = {1},
pages = {195-216},
abstract = {The aim of this study was to identify potential clinical markers of specific language impairment (SLI) in bilingual children with SLI by using the Greek version of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives. Twenty-one Greek-speaking monolingual and 15 bilingual children with SLI participated, along with monolingual ( N = 21) and bilingual ( N = 15) age-matched children with typical development. Results showed differences between typically development children and children with SLI in microstructure, while bilingual children with SLI were found to attain similar levels of performance, and even to outperform monolingual children with SLI, in macrostructure. It is suggested that the retelling coding scheme could permit differential diagnosis of SLI among bilingual children within the scope of narrative assessment.
},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
The aim of this study was to identify potential clinical markers of specific language impairment (SLI) in bilingual children with SLI by using the Greek version of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives. Twenty-one Greek-speaking monolingual and 15 bilingual children with SLI participated, along with monolingual ( N = 21) and bilingual ( N = 15) age-matched children with typical development. Results showed differences between typically development children and children with SLI in microstructure, while bilingual children with SLI were found to attain similar levels of performance, and even to outperform monolingual children with SLI, in macrostructure. It is suggested that the retelling coding scheme could permit differential diagnosis of SLI among bilingual children within the scope of narrative assessment.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Gagarina, Natalia; Walters, Joel
Narrative abilities in bilingual children Journal Article
In: Applied Psycholinguistics, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 11-17, 2016.
@article{Tsimpli2016d,
title = {Narrative abilities in bilingual children},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Natalia Gagarina and Joel Walters},
doi = {10.1017/S0142716415000399},
year = {2016},
date = {2016-01-01},
urldate = {2016-01-01},
journal = {Applied Psycholinguistics},
volume = {37},
number = {1},
pages = {11-17},
abstract = {The number of bilingual children is growing dramatically all over the world. In 2010 the International Organization of Migration documented 214 million migrants worldwide, many bilingual (Koser & Laczko, 2010). One of the challenges arising from the rapid increase of bilingual children is scientifically grounded assessment of linguistic proficiency in both of a child's languages in various language domains. Assessment in both languages is especially important to avoid misdiagnosis of language impairment. Specific language impairment (SLI) is among the most prevalent impairments, estimated to affect 7%–10% of children entering formal education (Grimm, 2003; Tomblin, Smith, & Zhang, 1997). Assessment tools for bilinguals in both the home language and the majority language are often lacking (for exceptions, see Gagarina, Klassert, & Topaj, 2010; Schulz & Tracy, 2011).
},
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pubstate = {published},
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The number of bilingual children is growing dramatically all over the world. In 2010 the International Organization of Migration documented 214 million migrants worldwide, many bilingual (Koser & Laczko, 2010). One of the challenges arising from the rapid increase of bilingual children is scientifically grounded assessment of linguistic proficiency in both of a child's languages in various language domains. Assessment in both languages is especially important to avoid misdiagnosis of language impairment. Specific language impairment (SLI) is among the most prevalent impairments, estimated to affect 7%–10% of children entering formal education (Grimm, 2003; Tomblin, Smith, & Zhang, 1997). Assessment tools for bilinguals in both the home language and the majority language are often lacking (for exceptions, see Gagarina, Klassert, & Topaj, 2010; Schulz & Tracy, 2011).
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Peristeri, Eleni; Tsapkini, Kyrana
Syntactic complexity does not affect verbal working memory capacity in non-fluent variant PPA Journal Article
In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 7, 2016.
@article{Tsimpli2016e,
title = {Syntactic complexity does not affect verbal working memory capacity in non-fluent variant PPA},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Peristeri and Kyrana Tsapkini},
doi = {10.3389/conf.fpsyg.2016.68.00139},
year = {2016},
date = {2016-01-01},
urldate = {2016-01-01},
journal = {Frontiers in Psychology},
volume = {7},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Andreou, Maria; Kananaj, Anila; Kapia, Enkeleida
Narrative insights from 6-7-year-old Greek-Albanian children Conference
2016.
@conference{Tsimpli2016f,
title = {Narrative insights from 6-7-year-old Greek-Albanian children},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Maria Andreou and Anila Kananaj and Enkeleida Kapia},
year = {2016},
date = {2016-01-01},
urldate = {2016-01-01},
pages = {67-82},
abstract = {This study reports on the experimental investigation of narrative production by 6-7 year-old typically developing Greek-Albanian children. The aim is to examine bilingual production in story Telling and story Retelling in order to investigate the role of priming reference tracking but also lexical and grammatical aspects of narrative production. Studies employing story Retelling techniques report a positive effect of priming reference in production (Hendrickson & Shapiro 2001). The results of the investigation suggest that the children"s performance improved in Retelling on micro-and macrostructure in L1 and L2. Reference tracking also improves in the Retelling condition, more evidently in the dominant (Greek) than in the weaker language of the bilingual child.
},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {conference}
}
This study reports on the experimental investigation of narrative production by 6-7 year-old typically developing Greek-Albanian children. The aim is to examine bilingual production in story Telling and story Retelling in order to investigate the role of priming reference tracking but also lexical and grammatical aspects of narrative production. Studies employing story Retelling techniques report a positive effect of priming reference in production (Hendrickson & Shapiro 2001). The results of the investigation suggest that the children"s performance improved in Retelling on micro-and macrostructure in L1 and L2. Reference tracking also improves in the Retelling condition, more evidently in the dominant (Greek) than in the weaker language of the bilingual child.
2015
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Łuniewska, Magdalena; Haman, Ewa; Armon-Lotem, Sharon; Etenkowski, Bartłomiej; Southwood, Frenette; Anđelković, Darinka; Blom, Elma; Boerma, Tessel; Chiat, Shula; de Abreu, Pascale Engel; Gagarina, Natalia; Gavarró, Anna; Håkansson, Gisela; Hickey, Tina; de López, Kristine Jensen; Marinis, Theodoros; Popović, Maša; Thordardottir, Elin; Blažienė, Agnė; Sánchez, Myriam Cantú; Dabašinskienė, Ineta; Ege, Pınar; Ehret, Inger-Anne; Fritsche, Nelly-Ann; Gatt, Daniela; Bibi Janssen, Maria Kambanaros; Kapalková, Svetlana; Kronqvist, Bjarke; Kunnari, Sari; Levorato, Chiara; Nenonen, Olga; Fhlannchadha, Siobhán Nic; O’Toole, Ciara; Polišenská, Kamila; Pomiechowska, Barbara; Ringblom, Natalia; Rinker, Tanja; Roch, Maja; Savić, Maja; Slančová, Daniela; Ünal-Logacev, Özlem
Ratings of age of acquisition of 299 words across 25 languages: Is there a cross-linguistic order of words? Journal Article
In: Behavior Research Methods, vol. 48, no. 3, 2015.
@article{Tsimpli2015,
title = {Ratings of age of acquisition of 299 words across 25 languages: Is there a cross-linguistic order of words?},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Magdalena Łuniewska and Ewa Haman and Sharon Armon-Lotem and Bartłomiej Etenkowski and Frenette Southwood and Darinka Anđelković and Elma Blom and Tessel Boerma and Shula Chiat and Pascale Engel de Abreu and Natalia Gagarina and Anna Gavarró and Gisela Håkansson and Tina Hickey and Kristine Jensen de López and Theodoros Marinis and Maša Popović and Elin Thordardottir and Agnė Blažienė and Myriam Cantú Sánchez and Ineta Dabašinskienė and Pınar Ege and Inger-Anne Ehret and Nelly-Ann Fritsche and Daniela Gatt and Bibi Janssen, Maria Kambanaros and Svetlana Kapalková and Bjarke Kronqvist and Sari Kunnari and Chiara Levorato and Olga Nenonen and Siobhán Nic Fhlannchadha and Ciara O’Toole and Kamila Polišenská and Barbara Pomiechowska and Natalia Ringblom and Tanja Rinker and Maja Roch and Maja Savić and Daniela Slančová and Özlem Ünal-Logacev},
doi = {10.3758/s13428-015-0636-6},
year = {2015},
date = {2015-08-15},
urldate = {2015-08-15},
journal = {Behavior Research Methods},
volume = {48},
number = {3},
abstract = {We present a new set of subjective age-of-acquisition (AoA) ratings for 299 words (158 nouns, 141 verbs) in 25 languages from five language families (Afro-Asiatic: Semitic languages; Altaic: one Turkic language: Indo-European: Baltic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Slavic, and Romance languages; Niger-Congo: one Bantu language; Uralic: Finnic and Ugric languages). Adult native speakers reported the age at which they had learned each word. We present a comparison of the AoA ratings across all languages by contrasting them in pairs. This comparison shows a consistency in the orders of ratings across the 25 languages. The data were then analyzed (1) to ascertain how the demographic characteristics of the participants influenced AoA estimations and (2) to assess differences caused by the exact form of the target question (when did you learn vs. when do children learn this word); (3) to compare the ratings obtained in our study to those of previous studies; and (4) to assess the validity of our study by comparison with quasi-objective AoA norms derived from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDI). All 299 words were judged as being acquired early (mostly before the age of 6 years). AoA ratings were associated with the raters' social or language status, but not with the raters' age or education. Parents reported words as being learned earlier, and bilinguals reported learning them later. Estimations of the age at which children learn the words revealed significantly lower ratings of AoA. Finally, comparisons with previous AoA and MB-CDI norms support the validity of the present estimations. Our AoA ratings are available for research or other purposes.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
We present a new set of subjective age-of-acquisition (AoA) ratings for 299 words (158 nouns, 141 verbs) in 25 languages from five language families (Afro-Asiatic: Semitic languages; Altaic: one Turkic language: Indo-European: Baltic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Slavic, and Romance languages; Niger-Congo: one Bantu language; Uralic: Finnic and Ugric languages). Adult native speakers reported the age at which they had learned each word. We present a comparison of the AoA ratings across all languages by contrasting them in pairs. This comparison shows a consistency in the orders of ratings across the 25 languages. The data were then analyzed (1) to ascertain how the demographic characteristics of the participants influenced AoA estimations and (2) to assess differences caused by the exact form of the target question (when did you learn vs. when do children learn this word); (3) to compare the ratings obtained in our study to those of previous studies; and (4) to assess the validity of our study by comparison with quasi-objective AoA norms derived from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDI). All 299 words were judged as being acquired early (mostly before the age of 6 years). AoA ratings were associated with the raters' social or language status, but not with the raters' age or education. Parents reported words as being learned earlier, and bilinguals reported learning them later. Estimations of the age at which children learn the words revealed significantly lower ratings of AoA. Finally, comparisons with previous AoA and MB-CDI norms support the validity of the present estimations. Our AoA ratings are available for research or other purposes.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Andreou, Maria; Knopp, Eva; Bongartz, Christiane
Character reference in Greek-German bilingual children’s narratives Journal Article
In: EUROSLA Yearbook, vol. 15, no. 3, 2015.
@article{Tsimpli2015b,
title = {Character reference in Greek-German bilingual children’s narratives},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Maria Andreou and Eva Knopp and Christiane Bongartz},
doi = {10.1075/eurosla.15.01and},
year = {2015},
date = {2015-08-11},
urldate = {2015-08-11},
journal = {EUROSLA Yearbook},
volume = {15},
number = {3},
abstract = {This study investigates reference management of two groups of 8–12 year old Greek–German bilinguals, resident in Greece (Bilinguals_GR N = 38) and in Germany (Bilinguals_GE N = 39). We analyze the bilinguals’ retellings in each language and compare them with data from two monolingual control groups of Greek and German children (Monolinguals_GR and Monolinguals_GE, N = 20 respectively). We seek to establish how the use of referential forms in character introduction, maintenance and reintroduction in the bilinguals’ narrative retellings is affected by language dominance and whether proficiency in each language patterns similarly with respect to dominance in input. Our results indicate that differences in choice of referential form can be attributed to language dominance. Bilingual production of referential expressions differed from that of monolinguals when exposure to one language outweighed the other, as in the case of Bilinguals_GE. Similarly, proficiency in terms of vocabulary, verb diversity and syntactic complexity was affected in the weaker language for this group, which showed a strong dominance in German input. When exposure was more balanced (Bilinguals_GR), proficiency measures in both languages were affected, but to a lesser degree.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
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}
This study investigates reference management of two groups of 8–12 year old Greek–German bilinguals, resident in Greece (Bilinguals_GR N = 38) and in Germany (Bilinguals_GE N = 39). We analyze the bilinguals’ retellings in each language and compare them with data from two monolingual control groups of Greek and German children (Monolinguals_GR and Monolinguals_GE, N = 20 respectively). We seek to establish how the use of referential forms in character introduction, maintenance and reintroduction in the bilinguals’ narrative retellings is affected by language dominance and whether proficiency in each language patterns similarly with respect to dominance in input. Our results indicate that differences in choice of referential form can be attributed to language dominance. Bilingual production of referential expressions differed from that of monolinguals when exposure to one language outweighed the other, as in the case of Bilinguals_GE. Similarly, proficiency in terms of vocabulary, verb diversity and syntactic complexity was affected in the weaker language for this group, which showed a strong dominance in German input. When exposure was more balanced (Bilinguals_GR), proficiency measures in both languages were affected, but to a lesser degree.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Kaltsa, Maria; Rothman, Jason
Exploring the source of differences and similarities in L1 attrition and heritage speaker competence: Evidence from pronominal resolution Journal Article
In: Lingua, vol. 164, 2015.
@article{Tsimpli2015c,
title = {Exploring the source of differences and similarities in L1 attrition and heritage speaker competence: Evidence from pronominal resolution},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Maria Kaltsa and Jason Rothman},
doi = {10.1016/j.lingua.2015.06.002},
year = {2015},
date = {2015-07-01},
urldate = {2015-07-01},
journal = {Lingua},
volume = {164},
abstract = {Several studies of different bilingual groups including L2 learners, child bilinguals, heritage speakers and L1 attriters reveal similar performance on syntax-discourse interface properties such as anaphora resolution (Sorace, 2011 and references therein). Specifically, bilinguals seem to allow more optionality in the interpretation of overt subject pronouns in null subject languages, such as Greek, Italian and Spanish while the interpretation of null subject pronouns is indistinguishable from monolingual natives. Nevertheless, there is some evidence pointing to bilingualism effects on the interpretation of null subject pronouns too in heritage speakers' grammars (Montrul, 2004) due to some form of 'arrested' development in this group of bilinguals. The present study seeks to investigate similarities and differences between two Greek Swedish bilingual groups, heritage speakers and L1 attriters, in anaphora resolution of null and overt subject pronouns in Greek using a self-paced listening with a sentence-picture matching decision task at the end of each sentence. The two groups differ in crucial ways: heritage speakers were simultaneous or early bilinguals while the L1 attriters were adult learners of the second language, Swedish. Our findings reveal differences from monolingual preferences in the interpretation of the overt pronoun for both heritage and attrited speakers while the differences attested between the two groups in the interpretation of null subject pronouns affect only response times with heritage being faster than attrited speakers. We argue that our results do not support an age of onset or differential input effects on bilingual performance in pronoun resolution.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Several studies of different bilingual groups including L2 learners, child bilinguals, heritage speakers and L1 attriters reveal similar performance on syntax-discourse interface properties such as anaphora resolution (Sorace, 2011 and references therein). Specifically, bilinguals seem to allow more optionality in the interpretation of overt subject pronouns in null subject languages, such as Greek, Italian and Spanish while the interpretation of null subject pronouns is indistinguishable from monolingual natives. Nevertheless, there is some evidence pointing to bilingualism effects on the interpretation of null subject pronouns too in heritage speakers' grammars (Montrul, 2004) due to some form of 'arrested' development in this group of bilinguals. The present study seeks to investigate similarities and differences between two Greek Swedish bilingual groups, heritage speakers and L1 attriters, in anaphora resolution of null and overt subject pronouns in Greek using a self-paced listening with a sentence-picture matching decision task at the end of each sentence. The two groups differ in crucial ways: heritage speakers were simultaneous or early bilinguals while the L1 attriters were adult learners of the second language, Swedish. Our findings reveal differences from monolingual preferences in the interpretation of the overt pronoun for both heritage and attrited speakers while the differences attested between the two groups in the interpretation of null subject pronouns affect only response times with heritage being faster than attrited speakers. We argue that our results do not support an age of onset or differential input effects on bilingual performance in pronoun resolution.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Andreou, Maria; Agathopoulou, Eleni; Masoura, Elvira
Tsimpli, I. M., Andreou, Μ., Agathopoulou, E. & Masoura, E. (2014). Narrative production, bilingualism and working memory capacity: a study of Greek-German bilingual children. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Greek Linguistics Journal Article
In: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Greek Linguistics, 2015.
@article{Tsimpli2015d,
title = {Tsimpli, I. M., Andreou, Μ., Agathopoulou, E. & Masoura, E. (2014). Narrative production, bilingualism and working memory capacity: a study of Greek-German bilingual children. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Greek Linguistics},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Maria Andreou and Eleni Agathopoulou and Elvira Masoura},
year = {2015},
date = {2015-05-28},
urldate = {2015-05-28},
journal = {Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Greek Linguistics},
abstract = {We investigate narrative production of 8-10 year old typically developing bilingual children. One group of these children grow up in Germany and attend German schools with exposure to Greek in afternoon classes only, while the other group attends the German School of Thessaloniki. Biographical data were gathered through a detailed questionnaire, allowed us to determine age of onset and input measures. A vocabulary production task was used as an independent measure of language proficiency. The results reveal correlations between working memory function and type of bilingualism. Vocabulary measures seem to correlate with narrative production both in qualitative and quantitative terms.
},
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We investigate narrative production of 8-10 year old typically developing bilingual children. One group of these children grow up in Germany and attend German schools with exposure to Greek in afternoon classes only, while the other group attends the German School of Thessaloniki. Biographical data were gathered through a detailed questionnaire, allowed us to determine age of onset and input measures. A vocabulary production task was used as an independent measure of language proficiency. The results reveal correlations between working memory function and type of bilingualism. Vocabulary measures seem to correlate with narrative production both in qualitative and quantitative terms.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Torregrossa, Jacopo; Bongartz, Christiane
Testing accessibility: A cross-linguistic comparison of the syntax of referring expressions Journal Article
In: LSA Annual Meeting Extended Abstracts, 2015.
@article{Tsimpli2015e,
title = {Testing accessibility: A cross-linguistic comparison of the syntax of referring expressions},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Jacopo Torregrossa and Christiane Bongartz },
doi = {10.3765/exabs.v0i0.3046},
year = {2015},
date = {2015-04-13},
urldate = {2015-04-13},
journal = {LSA Annual Meeting Extended Abstracts},
abstract = {Focusing on the discourse conditions that license the use of null subjects (pro) in Greek and Italian, this paper shows that the distribution of referring expressions (RE, e.g., overt and null pronoun, clitic, definite description, etc.) does not only depend on the referents’ discourse status (alias accessibility). Syntactic constraints play an important role too.},
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pubstate = {published},
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Focusing on the discourse conditions that license the use of null subjects (pro) in Greek and Italian, this paper shows that the distribution of referring expressions (RE, e.g., overt and null pronoun, clitic, definite description, etc.) does not only depend on the referents’ discourse status (alias accessibility). Syntactic constraints play an important role too.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Blom, Elma; Schaeffer, Jeannette
Reference and referentiality in native and learner grammars Journal Article
In: Lingua, vol. 155, pp. 1-154, 2015.
@article{Tsimpli2015f,
title = {Reference and referentiality in native and learner grammars},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Elma Blom and Jeannette Schaeffer},
doi = {10.1016/j.lingua.2015.01.005},
year = {2015},
date = {2015-02-01},
urldate = {2015-02-01},
journal = {Lingua},
volume = {155},
pages = {1-154},
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2014
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Papadopoulou, Despina; Peristeri, Eleni; Plemenou, Evagelia; Marinis, Theodoros
Pronoun ambiguity resolution in Greek: Evidence from monolingual adults and children Bachelor Thesis
2014.
@bachelorthesis{Tsimpli2014,
title = {Pronoun ambiguity resolution in Greek: Evidence from monolingual adults and children},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Despina Papadopoulou and Eleni Peristeri and Evagelia Plemenou and Theodoros Marinis},
doi = {10.1016/j.lingua.2014.09.006},
year = {2014},
date = {2014-12-24},
urldate = {2014-12-24},
journal = {Lingua},
volume = {155},
abstract = {A large body of psycholinguistic research has revealed that during sentence interpretation adults coordinate multiple sources of information. Particularly, they draw both on linguistic properties of the message and on information from the context to constrain their interpretations. Relatively little however is known about how this integrative processor develops through language acquisition and about how children process language. In this study, two on-line picture verification tasks were used to examine how 1st, 2nd and 4th/5th grade monolingual Greek children resolve pronoun ambiguities during sentence interpretation and how their performance compares to that of adults on the same tasks. Specifically, we manipulated the type of subject pronoun, i.e. null or overt, and examined how this affected participants’ preferences for competing antecedents, i.e. in the subject or object position. The results revealed both similarities and differences in how adults and the various child groups comprehended ambiguous pronominal forms. Particularly, although adults and children alike showed sensitivity to the distribution of overt and null subject pronouns, this did not always lead to convergent interpretation preferences.},
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pubstate = {published},
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A large body of psycholinguistic research has revealed that during sentence interpretation adults coordinate multiple sources of information. Particularly, they draw both on linguistic properties of the message and on information from the context to constrain their interpretations. Relatively little however is known about how this integrative processor develops through language acquisition and about how children process language. In this study, two on-line picture verification tasks were used to examine how 1st, 2nd and 4th/5th grade monolingual Greek children resolve pronoun ambiguities during sentence interpretation and how their performance compares to that of adults on the same tasks. Specifically, we manipulated the type of subject pronoun, i.e. null or overt, and examined how this affected participants’ preferences for competing antecedents, i.e. in the subject or object position. The results revealed both similarities and differences in how adults and the various child groups comprehended ambiguous pronominal forms. Particularly, although adults and children alike showed sensitivity to the distribution of overt and null subject pronouns, this did not always lead to convergent interpretation preferences.
Tsimpli, Ianthi
Early, late or very late?: Timing acquisition and bilingualism Journal Article
In: Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, vol. 4, no. 3, 2014.
@article{Tsimpli2014b,
title = {Early, late or very late?: Timing acquisition and bilingualism},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli},
doi = {10.1075/lab.4.3.01tsi},
year = {2014},
date = {2014-08-12},
urldate = {2014-08-12},
journal = {Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism},
volume = {4},
number = {3},
abstract = {Research on child bilingualism accounts for differences in the course and the outcomes of monolingual and different types of bilingual language acquisition primarily from two perspectives: age of onset of exposure to the language(s) and the role of the input (Genesee, Paradis, & Crago, 2004; Meisel, 2009; Unsworth et al., 2014). Some findings suggest that early successive bilingual children may pattern similarly to simultaneous bilingual children, passing through different trajectories from child L2 learners due to a later age of onset in the latter group. Studies on bilingual development have also shown that input quantity in bilingual acquisition is considerably reduced, i.e., in each of their two languages, bilingual children are likely exposed to much less input than their monolingual peers (Paradis & Genesee, 1996; Unsworth, 2013b). At the same time, simultaneous bilingual children develop and attain competence in the two languages, sometimes without even an attested age delay compared to monolingual children (Paradis, Genesee & Crago, 2011). The implication is that even half of the input suffices for early language development, at least with respect to ‘core’ aspects of language, in whatever way ‘core’ is defined. My aim in this article is to consider how an additional, linguistic variable interacts with age of onset and input in bilingual development, namely, the timing in L1 development of the phenomena examined in bilingual children’s performance. Specifically, I will consider timing differences attested in the monolingual development of features and structures, distinguishing between early, late or ‘very late’ acquired phenomena. I will then argue that this three-way distinction reflects differences in the role of narrow syntax: early phenomena are core, parametric and narrowly syntactic, in contrast to late and very late phenomena, which involve syntax-external or even language-external resources too. I explore the consequences of these timing differences in monolingual development for bilingual development. I will review some findings from early (V2 in Germanic, grammatical gender in Greek), late (passives) and very late (grammatical gender in Dutch) phenomena in the bilingual literature and argue that early phenomena can differentiate between simultaneous and (early) successive bilingualism with an advantage for the former group, while the other two reveal similarly (high or low) performance across bilingual groups, differentiating them from monolinguals. The paper proposes that questions about the role of age of onset and language input in early bilingual development can only be meaningfully addressed when the properties and timing of the phenomena under investigation are taken into account.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
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}
Research on child bilingualism accounts for differences in the course and the outcomes of monolingual and different types of bilingual language acquisition primarily from two perspectives: age of onset of exposure to the language(s) and the role of the input (Genesee, Paradis, & Crago, 2004; Meisel, 2009; Unsworth et al., 2014). Some findings suggest that early successive bilingual children may pattern similarly to simultaneous bilingual children, passing through different trajectories from child L2 learners due to a later age of onset in the latter group. Studies on bilingual development have also shown that input quantity in bilingual acquisition is considerably reduced, i.e., in each of their two languages, bilingual children are likely exposed to much less input than their monolingual peers (Paradis & Genesee, 1996; Unsworth, 2013b). At the same time, simultaneous bilingual children develop and attain competence in the two languages, sometimes without even an attested age delay compared to monolingual children (Paradis, Genesee & Crago, 2011). The implication is that even half of the input suffices for early language development, at least with respect to ‘core’ aspects of language, in whatever way ‘core’ is defined. My aim in this article is to consider how an additional, linguistic variable interacts with age of onset and input in bilingual development, namely, the timing in L1 development of the phenomena examined in bilingual children’s performance. Specifically, I will consider timing differences attested in the monolingual development of features and structures, distinguishing between early, late or ‘very late’ acquired phenomena. I will then argue that this three-way distinction reflects differences in the role of narrow syntax: early phenomena are core, parametric and narrowly syntactic, in contrast to late and very late phenomena, which involve syntax-external or even language-external resources too. I explore the consequences of these timing differences in monolingual development for bilingual development. I will review some findings from early (V2 in Germanic, grammatical gender in Greek), late (passives) and very late (grammatical gender in Dutch) phenomena in the bilingual literature and argue that early phenomena can differentiate between simultaneous and (early) successive bilingualism with an advantage for the former group, while the other two reveal similarly (high or low) performance across bilingual groups, differentiating them from monolinguals. The paper proposes that questions about the role of age of onset and language input in early bilingual development can only be meaningfully addressed when the properties and timing of the phenomena under investigation are taken into account.
Tsimpli, Ianthi
Early, late or very late: Timing acquisition and bilingualism: A reply to peer commentaries Journal Article
In: Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, vol. 4, no. 3, 2014.
@article{Tsimpli2014c,
title = {Early, late or very late: Timing acquisition and bilingualism: A reply to peer commentaries},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli},
doi = {10.1075/lab.4.3.17tsi},
year = {2014},
date = {2014-08-12},
urldate = {2014-08-12},
journal = {Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism},
volume = {4},
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Tsimpli, Ianthi; Peristeri, Eleni; Williams, Kipling D
Ostracism effects in children and adults with high functioning autism Journal Article
In: 2014.
@article{Tsimpli2014d,
title = {Ostracism effects in children and adults with high functioning autism},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Peristeri and Kipling D Williams},
year = {2014},
date = {2014-06-04},
urldate = {2014-06-04},
abstract = {Introduction. High-functioning autistic (HFA) individuals are frequently reported to express difficulty with understanding others' communicative intentions and emotions. The source of this deficit is difficult to pinpoint, since affective and social processes are diverse and primarily defined by what they are not (cognitive). Purpose of the Study. Our goal was to understand (i) where the affective and social interaction domain breaks down in HFA and whether social cognition and emotion-regulation abilities in HFA adults are (dis)continuous with those observed in HFA children, and (ii) highlight a possible dissociation between cognitive and social-affective subparts in the Theory of Mind construct through HFA. Method. Eleven HFA adults, ten HFA children and two groups of chronological age-matched controls participated in the Cyberball game, a method of inducing ostracism in laboratory settings. Each participant identified with a computerized agent participating in ball-tossing with two other players. The participant either received the ball (inclusion condition), or got completely excluded (exclusion condition). After the game, participants were asked to fill a reflexive questionnaire assessing their perceived social needs and emotions. Findings and Results. Several features of social adaptation in the ostracized condition were found to be unimpaired in both HFA groups when compared with the controls. However, HFA participants' emotional responses to the Cyberball game were found to be disproportionally inappropriate, with HFA adults showing gross deviations from the pattern exhibited by their age-matched controls in perceived emotions. Conclusions. The findings point towards a discontinuity between social cognition and affect in HFA. Crucially, this dissociation was found to be more striking in HFA adults relative to HFA children.
},
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pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
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Introduction. High-functioning autistic (HFA) individuals are frequently reported to express difficulty with understanding others' communicative intentions and emotions. The source of this deficit is difficult to pinpoint, since affective and social processes are diverse and primarily defined by what they are not (cognitive). Purpose of the Study. Our goal was to understand (i) where the affective and social interaction domain breaks down in HFA and whether social cognition and emotion-regulation abilities in HFA adults are (dis)continuous with those observed in HFA children, and (ii) highlight a possible dissociation between cognitive and social-affective subparts in the Theory of Mind construct through HFA. Method. Eleven HFA adults, ten HFA children and two groups of chronological age-matched controls participated in the Cyberball game, a method of inducing ostracism in laboratory settings. Each participant identified with a computerized agent participating in ball-tossing with two other players. The participant either received the ball (inclusion condition), or got completely excluded (exclusion condition). After the game, participants were asked to fill a reflexive questionnaire assessing their perceived social needs and emotions. Findings and Results. Several features of social adaptation in the ostracized condition were found to be unimpaired in both HFA groups when compared with the controls. However, HFA participants' emotional responses to the Cyberball game were found to be disproportionally inappropriate, with HFA adults showing gross deviations from the pattern exhibited by their age-matched controls in perceived emotions. Conclusions. The findings point towards a discontinuity between social cognition and affect in HFA. Crucially, this dissociation was found to be more striking in HFA adults relative to HFA children.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Fotiadou, Georgia; Fleva, Eleni; Katsiperi, Maria
Print exposure on lexical processing among Greek adults Conference
2014.
@conference{Tsimpli2014e,
title = {Print exposure on lexical processing among Greek adults},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Georgia Fotiadou and Eleni Fleva and Maria Katsiperi},
year = {2014},
date = {2014-05-01},
urldate = {2014-05-01},
abstract = {In 1992 Stanovich & Cunningham introduced the term print exposure to describe the degree of investment a person dedicates in reading and literacy activities (Payne et al. 2012). A number of studies have shown that familiarity with print is positively correlated to greater word recognition abilities. Therefore, one could argue that an enriched vocabulary may be due, in part, to greater familiarity with written language. To assess individual differences in print exposure, the Author Recognition Test (ART) and the Magazine Recognition Test (MRT) (Stanovich & West 1989) have extensively been used. Both measurements employ a signal-detection logic, in which participants are required to recognize actual target items (real authors and real magazines), when they are embedded among foils (names that are not authors or magazine titles, respectively). Stainthorp (1997) proposed that the ART and MRT are culturally sensitive instruments and highlighted the need to develop culturally specific equivalents. Thus, the aim of this study is twofold: (1) to develop the ART and the MRT checklist adapted to the Greek culture; and (2) to assess relation between familiarity with written language and word recognition abilities. Participants, 70 male and female Greek adults (age range = 18–81, mean age = 40.85), completed three measurements of print exposure, the ART, MRT (Stanovich & West 1989) and a modified version of the Reading Habits Self-Report (Acheson, Wells & MacDonald 2008). Next, participants were asked to complete an online self-generated word recognition task, in which both participants’ accuracy and reaction times were assessed. Results indicated that participants with higher vs. lower exposure to reading materials exhibited greater word recognition skills (higher accuracy and shorter reaction times). This study also paves the path for the development of print exposure measurements specifically for the Greek population, although further research is needed.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {conference}
}
In 1992 Stanovich & Cunningham introduced the term print exposure to describe the degree of investment a person dedicates in reading and literacy activities (Payne et al. 2012). A number of studies have shown that familiarity with print is positively correlated to greater word recognition abilities. Therefore, one could argue that an enriched vocabulary may be due, in part, to greater familiarity with written language. To assess individual differences in print exposure, the Author Recognition Test (ART) and the Magazine Recognition Test (MRT) (Stanovich & West 1989) have extensively been used. Both measurements employ a signal-detection logic, in which participants are required to recognize actual target items (real authors and real magazines), when they are embedded among foils (names that are not authors or magazine titles, respectively). Stainthorp (1997) proposed that the ART and MRT are culturally sensitive instruments and highlighted the need to develop culturally specific equivalents. Thus, the aim of this study is twofold: (1) to develop the ART and the MRT checklist adapted to the Greek culture; and (2) to assess relation between familiarity with written language and word recognition abilities. Participants, 70 male and female Greek adults (age range = 18–81, mean age = 40.85), completed three measurements of print exposure, the ART, MRT (Stanovich & West 1989) and a modified version of the Reading Habits Self-Report (Acheson, Wells & MacDonald 2008). Next, participants were asked to complete an online self-generated word recognition task, in which both participants’ accuracy and reaction times were assessed. Results indicated that participants with higher vs. lower exposure to reading materials exhibited greater word recognition skills (higher accuracy and shorter reaction times). This study also paves the path for the development of print exposure measurements specifically for the Greek population, although further research is needed.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Peristeri, Eleni; Tsapkini, Kyrana
The local-global dimension in cognitive control after left lateral prefrontal cortex damage: Evidence from the verbal and the non-verbal domain Journal Article
In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 5, 2014.
@article{Tsimpli2014f,
title = {The local-global dimension in cognitive control after left lateral prefrontal cortex damage: Evidence from the verbal and the non-verbal domain},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Peristeri and Kyrana Tsapkini},
doi = {10.3389/conf.fpsyg.2014.64.00089},
year = {2014},
date = {2014-04-01},
urldate = {2014-04-01},
journal = {Frontiers in Psychology},
volume = {5},
abstract = {Introduction The local-global dimension (Navon, 1977) has been studied extensively in healthy controls and preference for globally processed stimuli has been validated in both the visual and auditory modalities. Critically, the local-global dimension has an inherent interference resolution component, a type of cognitive control, and left-prefrontal-cortex-damaged (LPFC) individuals have exhibited inability to override habitual response behaviors in item recognition tasks that involve representational interference (Hamilton & Martin, 2005; Novick, Trueswell, & Thompson-Schill, 2005). However, very little is known about how the local-global attentional dimension affects LPFC-damaged individuals with aphasia in language and non-language domains that involve cognitive control mechanisms. Methods Eight patients with damage in the left PFC and twenty age- and education-matched language-unimpaired adults have participated in the study. Non-verbal tasks included an online Global-Local Identification task (designed after Navon, 1977) asking from participants to identify global geometrical shapes, which were made up of smaller (local) geometrical configurations while inhibiting local ones, and vice versa. In congruent trials, local and global shapes coincided whereas in incongruent trials they did not. Apart from the local and global condition, the task included a mixed local-global condition, in which participants were asked to identify global and local shapes interchangeably. Participants’ updating functions were independently measured by an online 2-back digit task where individuals were presented with digit sequences and were asked to respond by pressing a pre-specified key once a digit matched the digit occurring two digits earlier. The study also involved four online language tasks: (a) a task testing the interpretation of pronouns (Peristeri & Tsimpli, 2013) in globally ambiguous sentential contexts, (b) a task testing the interpretation of homophones in sentences requiring global processing, (c) a task testing the participants’ sensitivity to local, grammatical gender conflicts of single words in a picture-word interference task, and, (d) a task testing participants’ sensitivity to local orthographic violations in the stems and suffixes of single words in a semantic judgment task. Results In the Global-Local Identification task, LPFC-damaged patients with non-fluent aphasia performed more poorly in both accuracy (42% correct) and RTs on the local incongruent trials—where identification of the local shape presupposed inhibition of the global configuration—than any other global incongruent or congruent category. Controls were slower (but accurate) in local incongruent trials. On the other hand, PFC-damaged patients (along with controls) performed at ceiling level in the 2-back digit task, thus, indicating no deficit in their updating abilities. With respect to the language tasks, the patients performed more poorly in RTs in the tasks tapping on the integration of local cues relative to the tasks where conflict resolution was critically dependent on the parser’s sensitivity to global context. Discussion Overall, the local-global dimension seems to critically influence the performance of LPFC-damaged individuals with non-fluent aphasia in both language and non-language domains. A possible interpretation is that participants were able to override conflict more easily in tasks tapping on global than local processing. Broader implications for distinct types of inhibitory processes depending on the level of processing will be discussed.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Introduction The local-global dimension (Navon, 1977) has been studied extensively in healthy controls and preference for globally processed stimuli has been validated in both the visual and auditory modalities. Critically, the local-global dimension has an inherent interference resolution component, a type of cognitive control, and left-prefrontal-cortex-damaged (LPFC) individuals have exhibited inability to override habitual response behaviors in item recognition tasks that involve representational interference (Hamilton & Martin, 2005; Novick, Trueswell, & Thompson-Schill, 2005). However, very little is known about how the local-global attentional dimension affects LPFC-damaged individuals with aphasia in language and non-language domains that involve cognitive control mechanisms. Methods Eight patients with damage in the left PFC and twenty age- and education-matched language-unimpaired adults have participated in the study. Non-verbal tasks included an online Global-Local Identification task (designed after Navon, 1977) asking from participants to identify global geometrical shapes, which were made up of smaller (local) geometrical configurations while inhibiting local ones, and vice versa. In congruent trials, local and global shapes coincided whereas in incongruent trials they did not. Apart from the local and global condition, the task included a mixed local-global condition, in which participants were asked to identify global and local shapes interchangeably. Participants’ updating functions were independently measured by an online 2-back digit task where individuals were presented with digit sequences and were asked to respond by pressing a pre-specified key once a digit matched the digit occurring two digits earlier. The study also involved four online language tasks: (a) a task testing the interpretation of pronouns (Peristeri & Tsimpli, 2013) in globally ambiguous sentential contexts, (b) a task testing the interpretation of homophones in sentences requiring global processing, (c) a task testing the participants’ sensitivity to local, grammatical gender conflicts of single words in a picture-word interference task, and, (d) a task testing participants’ sensitivity to local orthographic violations in the stems and suffixes of single words in a semantic judgment task. Results In the Global-Local Identification task, LPFC-damaged patients with non-fluent aphasia performed more poorly in both accuracy (42% correct) and RTs on the local incongruent trials—where identification of the local shape presupposed inhibition of the global configuration—than any other global incongruent or congruent category. Controls were slower (but accurate) in local incongruent trials. On the other hand, PFC-damaged patients (along with controls) performed at ceiling level in the 2-back digit task, thus, indicating no deficit in their updating abilities. With respect to the language tasks, the patients performed more poorly in RTs in the tasks tapping on the integration of local cues relative to the tasks where conflict resolution was critically dependent on the parser’s sensitivity to global context. Discussion Overall, the local-global dimension seems to critically influence the performance of LPFC-damaged individuals with non-fluent aphasia in both language and non-language domains. A possible interpretation is that participants were able to override conflict more easily in tasks tapping on global than local processing. Broader implications for distinct types of inhibitory processes depending on the level of processing will be discussed.
Tsimpli, Ianthi
The prefunctional stage of first language acquisition: A crosslinguistic study Journal Article
In: The Prefunctional Stage of First Language Acquisition: A Crosslinguistic Study, pp. 1-254, 2014.
@article{Tsimpli2014g,
title = {The prefunctional stage of first language acquisition: A crosslinguistic study},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli},
doi = {10.4324/9781315857190},
year = {2014},
date = {2014-02-03},
urldate = {2014-02-03},
journal = {The Prefunctional Stage of First Language Acquisition: A Crosslinguistic Study},
pages = {1-254},
abstract = {This book provides a theory of first language acquisition in the syntactic framework of the theory of Universal Grammar. It addresses issues related to the earliest stage of development which ends roughly around the child’s second birthday. The theory put forward capitalises on the traditional observation that early child grammars characteristically lack lexical and morphological elements which belong to the ‘closed-class’ system. This book provides an account of the grammatical differences between the set of functional categories and the substantive categories.
},
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This book provides a theory of first language acquisition in the syntactic framework of the theory of Universal Grammar. It addresses issues related to the earliest stage of development which ends roughly around the child’s second birthday. The theory put forward capitalises on the traditional observation that early child grammars characteristically lack lexical and morphological elements which belong to the ‘closed-class’ system. This book provides an account of the grammatical differences between the set of functional categories and the substantive categories.
2013
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Hulk, Aafke
Grammatical gender and the notion of default: Insights from language acquisition Journal Article
In: Lingua, vol. 137, pp. 128–144, 2013.
@article{Tsimpli2013,
title = {Grammatical gender and the notion of default: Insights from language acquisition},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Aafke Hulk},
doi = {10.1016/j.lingua.2013.09.001},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-12-01},
urldate = {2013-12-01},
journal = {Lingua},
volume = {137},
pages = {128–144},
abstract = {The aim of this study is to investigate the contrast in the timing of acquisition of grammatical gender attested in Dutch and Greek child learners. Greek children show precocious acquisition of neuter gender in particular, while Dutch children experience a long delay in the acquisition of neuter nouns, which extends to school age. For both Dutch and Greek, neuter has been claimed to be the default gender value on grounds of syntactic distribution in contexts where gender agreement is inert. To reconcile the contrast between the learner and the language facts in Dutch, as well as the contrast in the timing between Greek and Dutch monolingual child learners, we consider two sets of criteria to define the notion of default: one set pertains to the notion of linguistic default and the other to the notion of learner default. We suggest that, whereas Greek neuter is both the linguistic and the learner default value, Dutch neuter is the linguistic but not the learner default, leading to a learnability problem.
},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
The aim of this study is to investigate the contrast in the timing of acquisition of grammatical gender attested in Dutch and Greek child learners. Greek children show precocious acquisition of neuter gender in particular, while Dutch children experience a long delay in the acquisition of neuter nouns, which extends to school age. For both Dutch and Greek, neuter has been claimed to be the default gender value on grounds of syntactic distribution in contexts where gender agreement is inert. To reconcile the contrast between the learner and the language facts in Dutch, as well as the contrast in the timing between Greek and Dutch monolingual child learners, we consider two sets of criteria to define the notion of default: one set pertains to the notion of linguistic default and the other to the notion of learner default. We suggest that, whereas Greek neuter is both the linguistic and the learner default value, Dutch neuter is the linguistic but not the learner default, leading to a learnability problem.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; et al, Maurizo Gotti
Morphological decomposition in Broca’s aphasia Journal Article
In: Aphasiology, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 296-319, 2013.
@article{Tsimpli2013b,
title = {Morphological decomposition in Broca’s aphasia},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Maurizo Gotti et al},
doi = {10.1080/02687038.2013.853022},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-11-18},
urldate = {2013-11-18},
journal = {Aphasiology},
volume = {28},
number = {3},
pages = {296-319},
abstract = {Background: Few studies have investigated how individuals diagnosed with post-stroke Broca's aphasia decompose words into their constituent morphemes in real-time processing. Previous research has focused on morphologically complex words in non-time-constrained settings or in syntactic frames, but not in the lexicon. Aims: We examined real-time processing of morphologically complex words in a group of five Greek-speaking individuals with Broca's aphasia to determine: (1) whether their morphological decomposition mechanisms are sensitive to lexical (orthography and frequency) vs. morphological (stem-suffix combinatory features) factors during visual word recognition, (2) whether these mechanisms are different in inflected vs. derived forms during lexical access, and (3) whether there is a preferred unit of lexical access (syllables vs. morphemes) for inflected vs. derived forms. Methods & Procedures: The study included two real-time experiments. The first was a semantic judgment task necessitating participants' categorical judgments for high- and low-frequency inflected real words and pseudohomophones of the real words created by either an orthographic error at the stem or a homophonous (but incorrect) inflectional suffix. The second experiment was a letter-priming task at the syllabic or morphemic boundary of morphologically transparent inflected and derived words whose stems and suffixes were matched for length, lemma and surface frequency. Outcomes & Results: The majority of the individuals with Broca's aphasia were sensitive to lexical frequency and stem orthography, while ignoring the morphological combinatory information encoded in the inflectional suffix that control participants were sensitive to. The letter-priming task, on the other hand, showed that individuals with aphasia-in contrast to controls-showed preferences with regard to the unit of lexical access, i.e., they were overall faster on syllabically than morphemically parsed words and their morphological decomposition mechanisms for inflected and derived forms were modulated by the unit of lexical access. Conclusions: Our results show that in morphological processing, Greek-speaking persons with aphasia rely mainly on stem access and thus are only sensitive to orthographic violations of the stem morphemes, but not to illegal morphological combinations of stems and suffixes. This possibly indicates an intact orthographic lexicon but deficient morphological decomposition mechanisms, possibly stemming from an underspecification of inflectional suffixes in the participants' grammar. Syllabic information, however, appears to facilitate lexical access and elicits repair mechanisms that compensate for deviant morphological parsing procedures.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Background: Few studies have investigated how individuals diagnosed with post-stroke Broca's aphasia decompose words into their constituent morphemes in real-time processing. Previous research has focused on morphologically complex words in non-time-constrained settings or in syntactic frames, but not in the lexicon. Aims: We examined real-time processing of morphologically complex words in a group of five Greek-speaking individuals with Broca's aphasia to determine: (1) whether their morphological decomposition mechanisms are sensitive to lexical (orthography and frequency) vs. morphological (stem-suffix combinatory features) factors during visual word recognition, (2) whether these mechanisms are different in inflected vs. derived forms during lexical access, and (3) whether there is a preferred unit of lexical access (syllables vs. morphemes) for inflected vs. derived forms. Methods & Procedures: The study included two real-time experiments. The first was a semantic judgment task necessitating participants' categorical judgments for high- and low-frequency inflected real words and pseudohomophones of the real words created by either an orthographic error at the stem or a homophonous (but incorrect) inflectional suffix. The second experiment was a letter-priming task at the syllabic or morphemic boundary of morphologically transparent inflected and derived words whose stems and suffixes were matched for length, lemma and surface frequency. Outcomes & Results: The majority of the individuals with Broca's aphasia were sensitive to lexical frequency and stem orthography, while ignoring the morphological combinatory information encoded in the inflectional suffix that control participants were sensitive to. The letter-priming task, on the other hand, showed that individuals with aphasia-in contrast to controls-showed preferences with regard to the unit of lexical access, i.e., they were overall faster on syllabically than morphemically parsed words and their morphological decomposition mechanisms for inflected and derived forms were modulated by the unit of lexical access. Conclusions: Our results show that in morphological processing, Greek-speaking persons with aphasia rely mainly on stem access and thus are only sensitive to orthographic violations of the stem morphemes, but not to illegal morphological combinations of stems and suffixes. This possibly indicates an intact orthographic lexicon but deficient morphological decomposition mechanisms, possibly stemming from an underspecification of inflectional suffixes in the participants' grammar. Syllabic information, however, appears to facilitate lexical access and elicits repair mechanisms that compensate for deviant morphological parsing procedures.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Peristeri, Eleni
Pronoun processing in Broca’s aphasia: Discourse–syntax effects in ambiguous anaphora resolution Journal Article
In: Aphasiology, vol. 27, no. 11, pp. 1381-1407, 2013.
@article{Tsimpli2013c,
title = {Pronoun processing in Broca’s aphasia: Discourse–syntax effects in ambiguous anaphora resolution},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Peristeri},
doi = {10.1080/02687038.2013.828344},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-11-01},
journal = {Aphasiology},
volume = {27},
number = {11},
pages = {1381-1407},
abstract = {Background: The interpretation of ambiguous subject pronouns in a null subject language, like Greek, requires that one possesses grammatical knowledge of the two subject pronominal forms, i.e., null and overt, and that discourse constraints regulating the distribution of the two pronouns in context are respected.Aims: We investigated whether the topic-shift feature encoded in overt subject pronouns would exert similar interpretive effects in a group of seven participants with Broca's aphasia and a group of language-unimpaired adults during online processing of null and overt subject pronouns in referentially ambiguous contexts.Method & Procedures: An offline picture-sentence matching task was initially administered to investigate whether the participants with Broca's aphasia had access to the gender and number features of clitic pronouns. An online self-paced listening picture-verification task was subsequently administered to examine how the aphasic individuals resolve pronoun ambiguities in contexts with either null or overt subject pronouns and how their performance compares to that of language-unimpaired adults.Outcomes & Results: Results demonstrate that the Broca group, along with controls, had intact access to the morphosyntactic features of clitic pronouns. However, the aphasic individuals showed decreased preference for non-salient antecedents in object position during the online resolution of ambiguous overt subject pronouns and preferred to pick the subject antecedent instead.Conclusions: Broca's aphasic participants' parsing decisions in the online task reflect their difficulty with establishing topic-shifted interpretations of the ambiguous overt subject pronouns. The presence of a local topic-shift effect in the immediate temporal vicinity of the overt pronoun suggests that sensitivity to the marked informational status of overt pronouns is preserved in the aphasic individuals, yet, it is blocked under conditions of global sentential processing.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Background: The interpretation of ambiguous subject pronouns in a null subject language, like Greek, requires that one possesses grammatical knowledge of the two subject pronominal forms, i.e., null and overt, and that discourse constraints regulating the distribution of the two pronouns in context are respected.Aims: We investigated whether the topic-shift feature encoded in overt subject pronouns would exert similar interpretive effects in a group of seven participants with Broca's aphasia and a group of language-unimpaired adults during online processing of null and overt subject pronouns in referentially ambiguous contexts.Method & Procedures: An offline picture-sentence matching task was initially administered to investigate whether the participants with Broca's aphasia had access to the gender and number features of clitic pronouns. An online self-paced listening picture-verification task was subsequently administered to examine how the aphasic individuals resolve pronoun ambiguities in contexts with either null or overt subject pronouns and how their performance compares to that of language-unimpaired adults.Outcomes & Results: Results demonstrate that the Broca group, along with controls, had intact access to the morphosyntactic features of clitic pronouns. However, the aphasic individuals showed decreased preference for non-salient antecedents in object position during the online resolution of ambiguous overt subject pronouns and preferred to pick the subject antecedent instead.Conclusions: Broca's aphasic participants' parsing decisions in the online task reflect their difficulty with establishing topic-shifted interpretations of the ambiguous overt subject pronouns. The presence of a local topic-shift effect in the immediate temporal vicinity of the overt pronoun suggests that sensitivity to the marked informational status of overt pronouns is preserved in the aphasic individuals, yet, it is blocked under conditions of global sentential processing.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Peristeri, Eleni
Pronoun processing in Broca’s aphasia: Discourse–syntax effects in ambiguous anaphora resolution Journal Article
In: Aphasiology, vol. 27, no. 11, pp. 1381-1407, 2013.
@article{Tsimpli2013cb,
title = {Pronoun processing in Broca’s aphasia: Discourse–syntax effects in ambiguous anaphora resolution},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Peristeri},
doi = {10.1080/02687038.2013.828344},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-11-01},
urldate = {2013-11-01},
journal = {Aphasiology},
volume = {27},
number = {11},
pages = {1381-1407},
abstract = {Background: The interpretation of ambiguous subject pronouns in a null subject language, like Greek, requires that one possesses grammatical knowledge of the two subject pronominal forms, i.e., null and overt, and that discourse constraints regulating the distribution of the two pronouns in context are respected.Aims: We investigated whether the topic-shift feature encoded in overt subject pronouns would exert similar interpretive effects in a group of seven participants with Broca's aphasia and a group of language-unimpaired adults during online processing of null and overt subject pronouns in referentially ambiguous contexts.Method & Procedures: An offline picture-sentence matching task was initially administered to investigate whether the participants with Broca's aphasia had access to the gender and number features of clitic pronouns. An online self-paced listening picture-verification task was subsequently administered to examine how the aphasic individuals resolve pronoun ambiguities in contexts with either null or overt subject pronouns and how their performance compares to that of language-unimpaired adults.Outcomes & Results: Results demonstrate that the Broca group, along with controls, had intact access to the morphosyntactic features of clitic pronouns. However, the aphasic individuals showed decreased preference for non-salient antecedents in object position during the online resolution of ambiguous overt subject pronouns and preferred to pick the subject antecedent instead.Conclusions: Broca's aphasic participants' parsing decisions in the online task reflect their difficulty with establishing topic-shifted interpretations of the ambiguous overt subject pronouns. The presence of a local topic-shift effect in the immediate temporal vicinity of the overt pronoun suggests that sensitivity to the marked informational status of overt pronouns is preserved in the aphasic individuals, yet, it is blocked under conditions of global sentential processing.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Background: The interpretation of ambiguous subject pronouns in a null subject language, like Greek, requires that one possesses grammatical knowledge of the two subject pronominal forms, i.e., null and overt, and that discourse constraints regulating the distribution of the two pronouns in context are respected.Aims: We investigated whether the topic-shift feature encoded in overt subject pronouns would exert similar interpretive effects in a group of seven participants with Broca's aphasia and a group of language-unimpaired adults during online processing of null and overt subject pronouns in referentially ambiguous contexts.Method & Procedures: An offline picture-sentence matching task was initially administered to investigate whether the participants with Broca's aphasia had access to the gender and number features of clitic pronouns. An online self-paced listening picture-verification task was subsequently administered to examine how the aphasic individuals resolve pronoun ambiguities in contexts with either null or overt subject pronouns and how their performance compares to that of language-unimpaired adults.Outcomes & Results: Results demonstrate that the Broca group, along with controls, had intact access to the morphosyntactic features of clitic pronouns. However, the aphasic individuals showed decreased preference for non-salient antecedents in object position during the online resolution of ambiguous overt subject pronouns and preferred to pick the subject antecedent instead.Conclusions: Broca's aphasic participants' parsing decisions in the online task reflect their difficulty with establishing topic-shifted interpretations of the ambiguous overt subject pronouns. The presence of a local topic-shift effect in the immediate temporal vicinity of the overt pronoun suggests that sensitivity to the marked informational status of overt pronouns is preserved in the aphasic individuals, yet, it is blocked under conditions of global sentential processing.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Prentza, Alexandra
On the optionality in L2 pronominal production and interpretation: What (more) can VP-coordination structures tell us? Journal Article
In: EUROSLA Yearbook, vol. 13, 2013.
@article{Tsimpli2013e,
title = {On the optionality in L2 pronominal production and interpretation: What (more) can VP-coordination structures tell us?},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Alexandra Prentza},
doi = {10.1075/eurosla.13.04pre},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-08-15},
urldate = {2013-08-15},
journal = {EUROSLA Yearbook},
volume = {13},
abstract = {This paper aims to contribute to the discussion pertaining to the source of optionality in second language (L2) pronominal interpretation. We examined pronominal use not only in L2 English adverbial – adjunct CP clauses (‘The student was upset because he had failed the test’), but also in English VP-coordination structures (‘Jane had studied hard and (she) passed the exam’), an area which has never been investigated before. While English adjunct CP clauses represent a context in which overt pronominal subjects are obligatory, in VP-coordination pronouns can be apparently dropped. These structures were tested by means of two English production tasks: a Sentence Completion task and a Cloze Test. Our results showed that compared to the English controls the Greek learners used (a) significantly more ungrammatical null subjects in adjunct CP clauses and, crucially, (b) significantly more overt pronominal subjects in VP-coordination structures. After examining two possible accounts for the observed optionality, namely, the Interface Hypothesis and the Interpretability Hypothesis, we argue that a language internal syntax explanation best addresses our data both in the adjunct CP clauses and in the VP-coordination structures.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
This paper aims to contribute to the discussion pertaining to the source of optionality in second language (L2) pronominal interpretation. We examined pronominal use not only in L2 English adverbial – adjunct CP clauses (‘The student was upset because he had failed the test’), but also in English VP-coordination structures (‘Jane had studied hard and (she) passed the exam’), an area which has never been investigated before. While English adjunct CP clauses represent a context in which overt pronominal subjects are obligatory, in VP-coordination pronouns can be apparently dropped. These structures were tested by means of two English production tasks: a Sentence Completion task and a Cloze Test. Our results showed that compared to the English controls the Greek learners used (a) significantly more ungrammatical null subjects in adjunct CP clauses and, crucially, (b) significantly more overt pronominal subjects in VP-coordination structures. After examining two possible accounts for the observed optionality, namely, the Interface Hypothesis and the Interpretability Hypothesis, we argue that a language internal syntax explanation best addresses our data both in the adjunct CP clauses and in the VP-coordination structures.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Peristeri, Eleni; Bablekou, Zoe; Chrysochoou, Elisavet
Verbal and non-verbal performance in an intellectually gifted and an Asperger’s Syndrome child: a profile comparison Conference
2013.
@conference{Tsimpli2013f,
title = {Verbal and non-verbal performance in an intellectually gifted and an Asperger’s Syndrome child: a profile comparison},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Peristeri and Zoe Bablekou and Elisavet Chrysochoou},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-04-01},
urldate = {2013-04-01},
abstract = {Introduction. Giftedness in childhood generally manifests itself with outstanding mental abilities or extraordinary abilities in specific domains (Gross, 1989). Some cognitive features often ascribed to giftedness, like advanced/sophisticated vocabulary and highly focused interests, resemble certain behavioral characteristics of children with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) (Burger-Veltmeijer, 2003). Relevant literature also refers to serious communication problems, emotional difficulties and social ostracism often experienced by gifted children, under the pressure of having to conform to prevalent social norms in order to be able to interact with age-peers (Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1993; Winner, 2000). This means that certain features in both giftedness and AS often tend to look alike and modify or mask one another, thus making accurate identification more difficult. Although examination of cognitive and linguistic profiles in AS individuals is not new in the field of psycholinguistics (e.g., Mayes & Calhoun, 2003; Ozonoff & Griffith, 2000), these data yield limited information regarding differential diagnosis between giftedness and AS. The present study is one of the first to examine the verbal and non-verbal profile of a highly gifted and an age-matched child with AS, and identify how these profiles are unique to each individual by referring to the local vs. global processing theory. Method. Two Greek-speaking primary school children, a gifted boy (ΑΑ, age: 6;3 yrs.) attending 1st grade and a boy with Asperger syndrome attending 2nd grade (MP, age: 7;2), participated in our study along with two age-matched typically-developing children as controls. The gifted and the AS boys were diagnosed as such on the basis of (i) psychiatric assessment, and (ii) the results of Intelligence Tests, namely Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices (administered to ΑΑ, Raven Score: 36/36) and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children/WISC (administered to MP, General Intelligence Index: 117), among others. Children were administered a series of online and offline tasks: an online ambiguous pronoun resolution task (Papadopoulou et al., 2011), clitic production (Tuller et al., 2004), expressive vocabulary (Vogindroukas et al., 2009), sentence repetition (Stavrakaki & Tsimpli, 1999), a local coherence task testing subjects’ ability to make contextually meaningful connections between linguistic information (Jolliffe & Baron-Cohen, 1999), a compilation of tasks testing cognitive and affective Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities, and a battery of tasks testing verbal working memory abilities (Chrysochoou, 2006; Chrysochoou & Bablekou, 2011); spatial target-stimulus locating task testing inhibition and negative priming effects (Treccani et al., 2009) and the Visual Patterns Test/VPT (Della Sala et al., 1997) testing visuo-spatial working memory abilities were also administered. Results and Discussion. According to the subtest level analysis, both the AS and the gifted child far outperformed (p=.000) their age-matched controls in expressive vocabulary, sentence repetition, verbal working memory (all 6 tasks), as well as in the VPT task. Performance differences between the gifted and the AS student were not apparent on the measures of cognitive ToM, clitic production, expressive vocabulary, sentence repetition, visuo-spatial working memory ,and most of the verbal working memory tests. On the other hand, the gifted child was found to score significantly higher (p<.05) in the coherence, affective ToM and non-word list recall tests, while he exhibited superior abilities in the non-verbal inhibition and in the ambiguous pronoun resolution tasks. Our results bear directly on the local vs. global processing distinction underlying each child’s distinctive developmental pattern (i.e. giftedness and AS), in the sense that AS is characterized by a broad deficit in global processing that affects both language and cognition and has wide-ranging effects, from word segmentation to inferences about pragmatic constraints and affective understanding (Arnold et al., 2009; Pijnacker et al., 2009; Snedeker, Diehl, & Paul, 2010; Tager-Flusberg, 2000). On the other hand, the results offer clear evidence on the gifted child’s superior ability to exploit both local and global cues and to effectively depend on inhibitory/control processes, appearing to develop in an adult-like manner in the specific individual. Selected References Chrysochoou, E. & Bablekou, Z. (2011). Phonological loop and central executive contributions to oral comprehension skills of 5.5 to 7.5 years old children. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25, 576-583. doi:10.1002/acp. 1723.Csikszentmihalyi, M., Rathunde, K., & Whalen, S. (1993). Talented teenagers: The roots of success and failure. New York: Cambridge University Press. Della Sala, S., Gray, C., Baddeley, A.D.,& Wilson,L. (1997). Visual Patterns Test. Bury St Edmunds: Thames Valley Test Company. Gross, M. U. M. (1989). The pursuit of excellence or the search for intimacy? The forced-choice dilemma of gifted youth. Roeper Review, 11 (4), 189-194. Papadopoulou, D., Plemmenou, L., Marinis, T., & Tsimpli, I. M. (2008). Pronoun ambiguity resolution : Evidence from adult and child Greek , oral presentation , ( A ) Child Language Seminar , Reading ,UK & ( B ) 11th International Congress for the Study of Child Language, Edinburgh, UK. Stavrakaki, S. & Τsimpli, I. M. (2000). Diagnostic verbal IQ test for school and preschool children: Standardization, statistical analysis, and psychometric properties. Proceedings of the 8thconference of the Panhellenic Association of Speech and Language Therapists. Athens: Ellinika Grammata: 95-106. Treccani, B., Argyri, E., Sorace, A., & Della Sala, S. (2009). Spatial negative priming in bilingualism. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16, 320 – 327. Winner, E. (2000). The origins and ends of giftedness. American Psychologist, 55, 159-169.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {conference}
}
Introduction. Giftedness in childhood generally manifests itself with outstanding mental abilities or extraordinary abilities in specific domains (Gross, 1989). Some cognitive features often ascribed to giftedness, like advanced/sophisticated vocabulary and highly focused interests, resemble certain behavioral characteristics of children with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) (Burger-Veltmeijer, 2003). Relevant literature also refers to serious communication problems, emotional difficulties and social ostracism often experienced by gifted children, under the pressure of having to conform to prevalent social norms in order to be able to interact with age-peers (Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1993; Winner, 2000). This means that certain features in both giftedness and AS often tend to look alike and modify or mask one another, thus making accurate identification more difficult. Although examination of cognitive and linguistic profiles in AS individuals is not new in the field of psycholinguistics (e.g., Mayes & Calhoun, 2003; Ozonoff & Griffith, 2000), these data yield limited information regarding differential diagnosis between giftedness and AS. The present study is one of the first to examine the verbal and non-verbal profile of a highly gifted and an age-matched child with AS, and identify how these profiles are unique to each individual by referring to the local vs. global processing theory. Method. Two Greek-speaking primary school children, a gifted boy (ΑΑ, age: 6;3 yrs.) attending 1st grade and a boy with Asperger syndrome attending 2nd grade (MP, age: 7;2), participated in our study along with two age-matched typically-developing children as controls. The gifted and the AS boys were diagnosed as such on the basis of (i) psychiatric assessment, and (ii) the results of Intelligence Tests, namely Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices (administered to ΑΑ, Raven Score: 36/36) and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children/WISC (administered to MP, General Intelligence Index: 117), among others. Children were administered a series of online and offline tasks: an online ambiguous pronoun resolution task (Papadopoulou et al., 2011), clitic production (Tuller et al., 2004), expressive vocabulary (Vogindroukas et al., 2009), sentence repetition (Stavrakaki & Tsimpli, 1999), a local coherence task testing subjects’ ability to make contextually meaningful connections between linguistic information (Jolliffe & Baron-Cohen, 1999), a compilation of tasks testing cognitive and affective Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities, and a battery of tasks testing verbal working memory abilities (Chrysochoou, 2006; Chrysochoou & Bablekou, 2011); spatial target-stimulus locating task testing inhibition and negative priming effects (Treccani et al., 2009) and the Visual Patterns Test/VPT (Della Sala et al., 1997) testing visuo-spatial working memory abilities were also administered. Results and Discussion. According to the subtest level analysis, both the AS and the gifted child far outperformed (p=.000) their age-matched controls in expressive vocabulary, sentence repetition, verbal working memory (all 6 tasks), as well as in the VPT task. Performance differences between the gifted and the AS student were not apparent on the measures of cognitive ToM, clitic production, expressive vocabulary, sentence repetition, visuo-spatial working memory ,and most of the verbal working memory tests. On the other hand, the gifted child was found to score significantly higher (p<.05) in the coherence, affective ToM and non-word list recall tests, while he exhibited superior abilities in the non-verbal inhibition and in the ambiguous pronoun resolution tasks. Our results bear directly on the local vs. global processing distinction underlying each child’s distinctive developmental pattern (i.e. giftedness and AS), in the sense that AS is characterized by a broad deficit in global processing that affects both language and cognition and has wide-ranging effects, from word segmentation to inferences about pragmatic constraints and affective understanding (Arnold et al., 2009; Pijnacker et al., 2009; Snedeker, Diehl, & Paul, 2010; Tager-Flusberg, 2000). On the other hand, the results offer clear evidence on the gifted child’s superior ability to exploit both local and global cues and to effectively depend on inhibitory/control processes, appearing to develop in an adult-like manner in the specific individual. Selected References Chrysochoou, E. & Bablekou, Z. (2011). Phonological loop and central executive contributions to oral comprehension skills of 5.5 to 7.5 years old children. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25, 576-583. doi:10.1002/acp. 1723.Csikszentmihalyi, M., Rathunde, K., & Whalen, S. (1993). Talented teenagers: The roots of success and failure. New York: Cambridge University Press. Della Sala, S., Gray, C., Baddeley, A.D.,& Wilson,L. (1997). Visual Patterns Test. Bury St Edmunds: Thames Valley Test Company. Gross, M. U. M. (1989). The pursuit of excellence or the search for intimacy? The forced-choice dilemma of gifted youth. Roeper Review, 11 (4), 189-194. Papadopoulou, D., Plemmenou, L., Marinis, T., & Tsimpli, I. M. (2008). Pronoun ambiguity resolution : Evidence from adult and child Greek , oral presentation , ( A ) Child Language Seminar , Reading ,UK & ( B ) 11th International Congress for the Study of Child Language, Edinburgh, UK. Stavrakaki, S. & Τsimpli, I. M. (2000). Diagnostic verbal IQ test for school and preschool children: Standardization, statistical analysis, and psychometric properties. Proceedings of the 8thconference of the Panhellenic Association of Speech and Language Therapists. Athens: Ellinika Grammata: 95-106. Treccani, B., Argyri, E., Sorace, A., & Della Sala, S. (2009). Spatial negative priming in bilingualism. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16, 320 – 327. Winner, E. (2000). The origins and ends of giftedness. American Psychologist, 55, 159-169.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Peristeri, Eleni; Andreou, Maria
Study of the production of clitic pronouns in bilingual children with Special Language Disorder Journal Article
In: Psychology, vol. 20, pp. 302 - 320, 2013.
@article{Tsimpli2013g,
title = {Study of the production of clitic pronouns in bilingual children with Special Language Disorder},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Peristeri and Maria Andreou},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-03-21},
urldate = {2013-03-21},
journal = {Psychology},
volume = {20},
pages = {302 - 320},
abstract = {1 ELENI PERISTERI 2 MARIA ANDREOU 3 Utilizing the language performance of children with Special Language Disorder (SLE) in control projects for the production of clitic pronouns as a clinical indicator of this disorder is one of the controversial dilemmas of the field of pre-scientific research with children. diagnosis EPD linguistically. Although findings from a number of interlingual studies indicate that the production of clitic pronouns is particularly problematic in SEN, studies conducted on Greek-speaking children with SLE do not seem to converge in their results. Five groups of children, of which two with monolingual and bilingual children with SEN and the rest with typically developing children equal in chronological age or verbal intelligence with children with SEN, participated in the present study. The study examined two general hypotheses: (a) whether the difficulty of children with SEN in producing clitic pronouns constitutes a time lag in language development or the emergence of a qualitatively distinct developmental course in SEN, and (b) whether the bilingualism of children with SEN will compensate for their language difficulty. The results showed that the performance of children with SEN was inferior to that of typically developing children of the same chronological age, therefore in favor of the theory of time delay in SEN. Also, the bilingualism of children with SEN was not found to have a significant positive or negative effect on children's performance. Keywords: Clitic pronouns, Bilingualism, Special Language Disorder. SUMMARY 1. Address: Department of English Language and Literature,
},
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pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
1 ELENI PERISTERI 2 MARIA ANDREOU 3 Utilizing the language performance of children with Special Language Disorder (SLE) in control projects for the production of clitic pronouns as a clinical indicator of this disorder is one of the controversial dilemmas of the field of pre-scientific research with children. diagnosis EPD linguistically. Although findings from a number of interlingual studies indicate that the production of clitic pronouns is particularly problematic in SEN, studies conducted on Greek-speaking children with SLE do not seem to converge in their results. Five groups of children, of which two with monolingual and bilingual children with SEN and the rest with typically developing children equal in chronological age or verbal intelligence with children with SEN, participated in the present study. The study examined two general hypotheses: (a) whether the difficulty of children with SEN in producing clitic pronouns constitutes a time lag in language development or the emergence of a qualitatively distinct developmental course in SEN, and (b) whether the bilingualism of children with SEN will compensate for their language difficulty. The results showed that the performance of children with SEN was inferior to that of typically developing children of the same chronological age, therefore in favor of the theory of time delay in SEN. Also, the bilingualism of children with SEN was not found to have a significant positive or negative effect on children's performance. Keywords: Clitic pronouns, Bilingualism, Special Language Disorder. SUMMARY 1. Address: Department of English Language and Literature,
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Peristeri, Eleni; Tsapkini, Kyrana
The on-line processing of unaccusativity in Greek agrammatism Journal Article
In: Applied Psycholinguistics, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 1 - 44, 2013.
@article{Tsimpli2013h,
title = {The on-line processing of unaccusativity in Greek agrammatism},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Peristeri and Kyrana Tsapkini},
doi = {10.1017/S0142716411000683},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-03-01},
journal = {Applied Psycholinguistics},
volume = {34},
number = {2},
pages = {1 - 44},
abstract = {We investigated the on-line processing of unaccusative and unergative sentences in a group of eight Greek-speaking individuals diagnosed with Broca aphasia and a group of language-unimpaired subjects used as the baseline. The processing of unaccusativity refers to the reactivation of the postverbal trace by retrieving the mnemonic representation of the verb's syntactically defined antecedent provided in the early part of the sentence. Our results demonstrate that the Broca group showed selective reactivation of the antecedent for the unaccusatives. We consider several interpretations for our data, including explanations focusing on the transitivization properties of nonactive and active voice-alternating unaccusatives, the costly procedure claimed to underlie the parsing of active nonvoice-alternating unaccusatives, and the animacy of the antecedent modulating the syntactic choices of the patients.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
We investigated the on-line processing of unaccusative and unergative sentences in a group of eight Greek-speaking individuals diagnosed with Broca aphasia and a group of language-unimpaired subjects used as the baseline. The processing of unaccusativity refers to the reactivation of the postverbal trace by retrieving the mnemonic representation of the verb's syntactically defined antecedent provided in the early part of the sentence. Our results demonstrate that the Broca group showed selective reactivation of the antecedent for the unaccusatives. We consider several interpretations for our data, including explanations focusing on the transitivization properties of nonactive and active voice-alternating unaccusatives, the costly procedure claimed to underlie the parsing of active nonvoice-alternating unaccusatives, and the animacy of the antecedent modulating the syntactic choices of the patients.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Peristeri, Eleni; Tsapkini, Kyrana
The on-line processing of unaccusativity in Greek agrammatism Journal Article
In: Applied Psycholinguistics, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 1 - 44, 2013.
@article{Tsimpli2013i,
title = {The on-line processing of unaccusativity in Greek agrammatism},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Peristeri and Kyrana Tsapkini},
doi = {10.1017/S0142716411000683},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-03-01},
urldate = {2013-03-01},
journal = {Applied Psycholinguistics},
volume = {34},
number = {2},
pages = {1 - 44},
abstract = {We investigated the on-line processing of unaccusative and unergative sentences in a group of eight Greek-speaking individuals diagnosed with Broca aphasia and a group of language-unimpaired subjects used as the baseline. The processing of unaccusativity refers to the reactivation of the postverbal trace by retrieving the mnemonic representation of the verb's syntactically defined antecedent provided in the early part of the sentence. Our results demonstrate that the Broca group showed selective reactivation of the antecedent for the unaccusatives. We consider several interpretations for our data, including explanations focusing on the transitivization properties of nonactive and active voice-alternating unaccusatives, the costly procedure claimed to underlie the parsing of active nonvoice-alternating unaccusatives, and the animacy of the antecedent modulating the syntactic choices of the patients.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
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}
We investigated the on-line processing of unaccusative and unergative sentences in a group of eight Greek-speaking individuals diagnosed with Broca aphasia and a group of language-unimpaired subjects used as the baseline. The processing of unaccusativity refers to the reactivation of the postverbal trace by retrieving the mnemonic representation of the verb's syntactically defined antecedent provided in the early part of the sentence. Our results demonstrate that the Broca group showed selective reactivation of the antecedent for the unaccusatives. We consider several interpretations for our data, including explanations focusing on the transitivization properties of nonactive and active voice-alternating unaccusatives, the costly procedure claimed to underlie the parsing of active nonvoice-alternating unaccusatives, and the animacy of the antecedent modulating the syntactic choices of the patients.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Prentza, Alexandra
The Interpretability of Features in Second Language Acquisition: Evidence from Null and Postverbal Subjects in L2 English Journal Article
In: Journal of Greek Linguistics, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 323-365, 2013.
@article{nokey,
title = {The Interpretability of Features in Second Language Acquisition: Evidence from Null and Postverbal Subjects in L2 English},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Alexandra Prentza},
doi = {10.1163/15699846-13130204},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-01-01},
urldate = {2013-01-01},
journal = {Journal of Greek Linguistics},
volume = {13},
number = {2},
pages = {323-365},
abstract = {We examine the microparameters of null and postverbal subjects in the Greek L1/English L2 interlanguage, exploring the role of interpretability in interlanguage representations. Our results suggest that while uninterpretable features are inaccessible in L2 acquisition, interpretable features are available and play a compensatory role. Although the abstract L1 properties of subject-verb agreement seem to transfer to the L2 representation, the effects appear scattered and transfer is not direct. We thus suggest that Greek-learner L2 English grammar exhibits non-random optionality in the properties of null and postverbal subjects, regulated by parameter-resetting (feature re-valuation) which is, however, neither the L1 (Greek) nor the target L2 (English) option.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
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We examine the microparameters of null and postverbal subjects in the Greek L1/English L2 interlanguage, exploring the role of interpretability in interlanguage representations. Our results suggest that while uninterpretable features are inaccessible in L2 acquisition, interpretable features are available and play a compensatory role. Although the abstract L1 properties of subject-verb agreement seem to transfer to the L2 representation, the effects appear scattered and transfer is not direct. We thus suggest that Greek-learner L2 English grammar exhibits non-random optionality in the properties of null and postverbal subjects, regulated by parameter-resetting (feature re-valuation) which is, however, neither the L1 (Greek) nor the target L2 (English) option.
Tsimpli, Ianthi
Evidence for the language instinct Journal Article
In: The Cambridge Handbook of Biolinguistics, pp. 49-68, 2013.
@article{Tsimpli2013j,
title = {Evidence for the language instinct},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli},
doi = {10.1017/CBO9780511980435.006},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-01-01},
urldate = {2013-01-01},
journal = {The Cambridge Handbook of Biolinguistics},
pages = {49-68},
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pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
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Tsimpli, Ianthi; Smith, Neil; Morgan, Gary; Woll, Bencie
The signs of a Savant: Language against the odds Journal Article
In: The Signs of a Savant: Language Against the Odds, pp. 1-219, 2013.
@article{Tsimpli2013k,
title = {The signs of a Savant: Language against the odds},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Neil Smith and Gary Morgan and Bencie Woll},
doi = {10.1017/CBO9780511780530},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-01-01},
urldate = {2013-01-01},
journal = {The Signs of a Savant: Language Against the Odds},
pages = {1-219},
abstract = {Every once in a while nature gives us insight into the human condition by providing us with a unique case whose special properties illuminate the species as a whole. Christopher is such an example. Despite disabilities which mean that everyday tasks are burdensome chores, Christopher is a linguistic wonder who can read, write, speak, understand and translate more than twenty languages. On some tests he shows a severely low IQ, hinting at ineducability, yet his English language ability indicates an IQ in excess of 120 (a level more than sufficient to enter university). Christopher is a savant, someone with an island of startling talent in a sea of inability. This book documents his learning of British Sign Language, casting light on the modularity of cognition, the modality neutrality of the language faculty, the structure of memory, the grammar of signed language and the nature of the human mind. © Neil Smith, Ianthi Tsimpli, Gary Morgan and Bencie Woll 2011.},
keywords = {},
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Every once in a while nature gives us insight into the human condition by providing us with a unique case whose special properties illuminate the species as a whole. Christopher is such an example. Despite disabilities which mean that everyday tasks are burdensome chores, Christopher is a linguistic wonder who can read, write, speak, understand and translate more than twenty languages. On some tests he shows a severely low IQ, hinting at ineducability, yet his English language ability indicates an IQ in excess of 120 (a level more than sufficient to enter university). Christopher is a savant, someone with an island of startling talent in a sea of inability. This book documents his learning of British Sign Language, casting light on the modularity of cognition, the modality neutrality of the language faculty, the structure of memory, the grammar of signed language and the nature of the human mind. © Neil Smith, Ianthi Tsimpli, Gary Morgan and Bencie Woll 2011.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Prentza, Alexandra
Resolution of pronominal ambiguity in Greek: syntax and pragmatics Conference
2013.
@conference{Tsimpli2013l,
title = {Resolution of pronominal ambiguity in Greek: syntax and pragmatics},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Alexandra Prentza},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-01-01},
urldate = {2013-01-01},
abstract = {Our study explores the individual effects as well as the interaction of two variables relevant in pronominal anaphora: a) Pronoun Type which refers to the parametric choices of subject pronoun (null and overt) in languages like Greek and the related interpretive distinctions and b) Pragmatic Plausibility which refers to whether the choice of an antecedent is highly plausible or neutral. Our aim is to investigate whether parametric choices of subject pronoun and the associated interpretive distinctions remain relevant in pronominal anaphora when factors like pragmatic plausibility are present. In the pragmatically neutral condition our results are in line with findings from similar studies: null pronouns are linked to subject antecedents, while overt pronouns to object ones. In the pragmatically biased condition, we found that although Pragmatic Plausibility affected responses, interestingly, parametric choices still affected the choice of an antecedent. In the subject biased items subject responses were chosen significantly more when the pronoun was null than overt, while in the object biased items object responses were chosen significantly more when the pronoun was overt than null. Our claim is that, and this is the contribution of the current work, that in a language like Greek pragmatic considerations may not cancel the application of the antecedent assignment strategy which is based on the interpretive distinction between null and overt pronominal subjects.},
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pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {conference}
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Our study explores the individual effects as well as the interaction of two variables relevant in pronominal anaphora: a) Pronoun Type which refers to the parametric choices of subject pronoun (null and overt) in languages like Greek and the related interpretive distinctions and b) Pragmatic Plausibility which refers to whether the choice of an antecedent is highly plausible or neutral. Our aim is to investigate whether parametric choices of subject pronoun and the associated interpretive distinctions remain relevant in pronominal anaphora when factors like pragmatic plausibility are present. In the pragmatically neutral condition our results are in line with findings from similar studies: null pronouns are linked to subject antecedents, while overt pronouns to object ones. In the pragmatically biased condition, we found that although Pragmatic Plausibility affected responses, interestingly, parametric choices still affected the choice of an antecedent. In the subject biased items subject responses were chosen significantly more when the pronoun was null than overt, while in the object biased items object responses were chosen significantly more when the pronoun was overt than null. Our claim is that, and this is the contribution of the current work, that in a language like Greek pragmatic considerations may not cancel the application of the antecedent assignment strategy which is based on the interpretive distinction between null and overt pronominal subjects.
2012
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Peristeri, Eleni; Tsapkini, Kyrana
Ambiguous Referential Processing in Broca's Aphasia: Evidence from Eyetracking Journal Article
In: Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 61, pp. 271-272, 2012.
@article{Tsimpli2012,
title = {Ambiguous Referential Processing in Broca's Aphasia: Evidence from Eyetracking},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Peristeri and Kyrana Tsapkini},
doi = {10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.10.181},
year = {2012},
date = {2012-10-18},
urldate = {2012-10-18},
journal = {Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences},
volume = {61},
pages = {271-272},
abstract = {Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 61 (2012) 271 –272 1877-0428 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of The Academy of Aphasia doi: 10.1016/j. sbspro. 2012.10. 181* Corresponding author. E-mail address:[email protected]. © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of The Academy of Aphasia Available online at www. sciencedirect. com 2012 Published by Elsevier tion and/or pe-review under respons bility of The Academy of Aphasia Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.},
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Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 61 (2012) 271 –272 1877-0428 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of The Academy of Aphasia doi: 10.1016/j. sbspro. 2012.10. 181* Corresponding author. E-mail address:[email protected]. © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of The Academy of Aphasia Available online at www. sciencedirect. com 2012 Published by Elsevier tion and/or pe-review under respons bility of The Academy of Aphasia Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Prentza, Alexandra
L2 pronominal subject use and interpretation: evidence from English subordinate and coordinate clauses Presentation
04.09.2012.
@misc{Tsimpli2012b,
title = {L2 pronominal subject use and interpretation: evidence from English subordinate and coordinate clauses},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Alexandra Prentza},
year = {2012},
date = {2012-09-04},
urldate = {2012-09-04},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {presentation}
}
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Fotiadou, Georgia; Lavidas, Nikolaos
Active vs nonactive voice in the Greek diachrony: Real or apparent optionality in the use of voice morphology? Conference
2012.
@conference{Tsimpli2012c,
title = {Active vs nonactive voice in the Greek diachrony: Real or apparent optionality in the use of voice morphology?},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Georgia Fotiadou and Nikolaos Lavidas},
year = {2012},
date = {2012-01-01},
urldate = {2012-01-01},
abstract = {The aim of our study is to examine the diachronic development of a set of anticausative verbs with respect to the frequency of ACT/NACT (active/nonactive) Voice morphology as well as their participation in causative (transitive) and anticausative structures. We investigate diachronic differences between verbs that synchronically mark anticausative with ACT and other verbs which express anticausative either with ACT or NACT. Significant differences between the verbs are shown in the previous periods with respect to ACT/NACT distribution, while anticausative readings show a similar diachronic development of Voice marking regardless of the Lexical Conceptual Structure (LCS) of the verb class. We propose that this is caused by a change in the features of NACT morphology from a period when syntactic movement (internal Merge) of an internal argument to the subject position needs to be morphologically marked with (NACT) Voice morphology to the stage attested today where syntactic movement does not need to be marked with Voice morphology. Keywords: Voice morphology, anticausatives, verbs of two forms (“διτυπίας”), diachrony
},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {conference}
}
The aim of our study is to examine the diachronic development of a set of anticausative verbs with respect to the frequency of ACT/NACT (active/nonactive) Voice morphology as well as their participation in causative (transitive) and anticausative structures. We investigate diachronic differences between verbs that synchronically mark anticausative with ACT and other verbs which express anticausative either with ACT or NACT. Significant differences between the verbs are shown in the previous periods with respect to ACT/NACT distribution, while anticausative readings show a similar diachronic development of Voice marking regardless of the Lexical Conceptual Structure (LCS) of the verb class. We propose that this is caused by a change in the features of NACT morphology from a period when syntactic movement (internal Merge) of an internal argument to the subject position needs to be morphologically marked with (NACT) Voice morphology to the stage attested today where syntactic movement does not need to be marked with Voice morphology. Keywords: Voice morphology, anticausatives, verbs of two forms (“διτυπίας”), diachrony
2011
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Peristeri, Eleni; Tsapkini, Kyrana
Linguistic Processing and Executive Control: Evidence for Inhibition in Broca's Aphasia Journal Article
In: Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 23, pp. 213-214, 2011.
@article{Tsimpli2011,
title = {Linguistic Processing and Executive Control: Evidence for Inhibition in Broca's Aphasia},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Eleni Peristeri and Kyrana Tsapkini},
doi = {10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.09.244},
year = {2011},
date = {2011-12-31},
urldate = {2011-12-31},
journal = {Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences},
volume = {23},
pages = {213-214},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Tsimpli, Ianthi; Mastropavlou, Maria
The Role of Suffixes in Grammatical Gender Assignment in Modern Greek: A Psycholinguistic Study Journal Article
In: Journal of Greek Linguistics 11(1): DOI:, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 27-55, 2011.
@article{Tsimpli2011b,
title = {The Role of Suffixes in Grammatical Gender Assignment in Modern Greek: A Psycholinguistic Study},
author = {Ianthi Tsimpli and Maria Mastropavlou},
doi = {10.1163/156658411X563685},
year = {2011},
date = {2011-05-01},
urldate = {2011-05-01},
journal = {Journal of Greek Linguistics 11(1): DOI:},
volume = {11},
number = {1},
pages = {27-55},
abstract = {The aim of this study is to investigate how native speakers of Greek assign gender to nouns. The main question concerns the role that the morphophonological information encoded on noun suffixes plays in the assignment of gender values by native speakers. To that end, novel nouns were created combined with the different nominal suffixes so that the role of the suffix could be investigated independently of any lexical and/or semantic eff ects. Monolingual, native speakers of Greek were asked to use these novel nouns by providing an agreeing definite article thus indicating the corresponding gender value. The experiment was conducted both orally and in written form, so that potential effects of phonological as opposed to orthographic information could be examined. Following the experiment, probability values (predictive values) were calculated for each noun suffix based on the participants' interpretations, which were then compared to counts of frequency co-occurrence of each suffix with each gender value in the language. The results are discussed with respect to theoretical models of gender assignment and lexical access, while lexicalist approaches to morphology are also addressed.
},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
The aim of this study is to investigate how native speakers of Greek assign gender to nouns. The main question concerns the role that the morphophonological information encoded on noun suffixes plays in the assignment of gender values by native speakers. To that end, novel nouns were created combined with the different nominal suffixes so that the role of the suffix could be investigated independently of any lexical and/or semantic eff ects. Monolingual, native speakers of Greek were asked to use these novel nouns by providing an agreeing definite article thus indicating the corresponding gender value. The experiment was conducted both orally and in written form, so that potential effects of phonological as opposed to orthographic information could be examined. Following the experiment, probability values (predictive values) were calculated for each noun suffix based on the participants' interpretations, which were then compared to counts of frequency co-occurrence of each suffix with each gender value in the language. The results are discussed with respect to theoretical models of gender assignment and lexical access, while lexicalist approaches to morphology are also addressed.