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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.

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. published

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.

The aim of this paper is to provide a formal account of the differences between adverbial clauses introduced by the Greek temporal connectives kathos, eno and afu. Based on Haegeman's (2003, this issue) criteria for distinguishing between central and peripheral clauses, we examine the ‘external’ and ‘internal’ syntax of Greek adverbials introduced by these connectives. Although Haegeman's proposal aims to cover not only English but also cross-linguistic properties of central vs. peripheral clauses, we would like to argue that there are certain language-specific criteria, namely aspect and negation, which could be used as additional support for the structural distinction proposed and which call for some modifications of the structural differences suggested for English adverbials. The Greek connectives are shown to be aspectually dependent in the sense that they are specified for [boundedness] as part of their lexical entry. This property affects their structural position in central vs. peripheral adverbials, on one hand, and the possibilities of temporal anchoring onto the matrix clause, on the other. Finally, the language-specific criteria discussed, namely aspect and negation, are tested through an interpretation task with native speakers of Greek in order to establish the preference for the temporal over the non-temporal readings when aspect and negation are controlled for.

Christopher (C) is a mildly autistic, severely apraxic, savant who learns languages with surprising ease. Surprising because outside language-learning he has severe difficulties in ‘non-verbal’ cognitive domains, particularly where his visuo-spatial abilities are involved. C's unique language learning skill has been reported on in several previous studies, but his verbal abilities have previously been measured mainly in his learning of different spoken and written languages, that is in the modality of oral language. In earlier work we have also described some aspects of C's learning of British Sign Language (BSL), a language produced and perceived in the visual modality. The present investigation gives further details of C's learning of BSL, by focusing on his use of sign language classifiers, and compares his uneven learning with that of a group of university language honours students. Specifically, although after exposure to an introduction to sign language course, C performed within normal limits on a variety of BSL constructions, he had significant difficulty with the production and comprehension of classifiers, a category that crucially involves the interaction of grammatical and spatial cognition. Here we present two new sets of results of tests of C's understanding and use of classifiers: his comprehension of sentences with differing degrees of spatial and grammatical encoding, and his performance on a placement task involving classifiers. In the first task C's poor performance was worst on those sentences with the most complex demands on spatial cognition. In the task placing objects on a table C performed well with real object placement but could not use the classifier system to represent object placement in sign space. Performance on these tasks as well as C's uneven profile of BSL acquisition is interpreted within an established model of the mind but with modifications to accommodate the interface between language processing and non-verbal, visuo-spatial cognition.

The aim of this study is to investigate the interaction betweenviewpoint aspect and argument realization. More specifically, we examine the correlation of +/� perfective verb forms in Greek and null objects with indefinite,non-specific interpretation.Itisarguedthatalthoughnullobjectsarepossiblewithbothperfective and imperfectiveverbs, imperfectiveverbs favour object omission more than perfectives. We claim that this is due to two reasons: first, that there is a difference in the syntactic representation of overt direct objects with perfective and imperfective verbs, which is associated with the notion of economy in their respective derivations, i.e. Merge as opposed to Merge + Move; secondly, that perfective verbs show an interpretive difference at the LF interface depending on the overt versus null nature of the direct object, whereas imperfectives do not. The difference is related to the semantic notion of telicity. This prediction has been tested in an off-line sentence-completion task with two groups of native speakers of Greek, an adult and a child group. The data revealed that native speakers of Greek preferred to use overt DP objects with perfective verbs more than with imperfectives. This finding is interpreted as showing that Aspect is a functional feature with an effect on argument realization. # 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This paper presents a case-study of Greek SLI and has the following aims: 1. (i) to present and analyse SLI data concentrating on the use of D-elements in the child's grammatical system: the definite article, object clitics and the wh-phrase what; 2. (ii) to show that there is a clear correlation in the errors involving the morphemes in question and that this is due to a deficit in the determiner system which, in adult form, represents the above morphemes in terms of the same functional category D; 3. (iii) to provide further evidence for the delay in L1 development of object clitics (or agreement) relative to subject agreement (or clitics) showing that a similar pattern is attested in the case of this SLI child. Finally, the analysis presented appears to favour an account of SLI whereby the deficit evidenced by the use of grammatical categories is indeed a grammatical, rather than a processing, deficit and is restricted to the domain of functional categories. The differential success in this child's use of some functional categories (e.g. subject agreement vs. the determiner system) points to the suggestion that SLI involves aspects of the normal route of L1A but also severe delays compared to normal L1A. The question whether the attested delay indicates a selective deficit in the processing strategies and learning mechanisms implemented in SLI cases cannot be unreservedly concluded on the basis of the data from this study only.

We report on the case of a polyglot savant (Christopher) who has a remarkable talent for learning and translating languages. Building on previous work which had established both the range of languages at Christopher's command and the extent to which his linguistic knowledge was integrated into his cognitive ability, we taught him two new languages for which we controlled the input. We had two main aims: the first was to test the hypothesis (within one version of the Principles and Parameters framework) that parameter resetting is not an option available to the second language learner; the second was to accrue further evidence for or against Fodor's modularity hypothesis and cast light on the possible range of interactions between linguistic and ‘central’ cognitive processes. The languages chosen were Berber, an Afro-Asiatic language spoken in North Africa, and Epun, an invented language deliberately devised to contain constructions which violated universal grammatical principles. In Christopher's acquisition of Berber we gleaned evidence from a variety of phenomena, including word order, null subjects, that -trace effects, wh-island violations and cliticisation, that his learning was conditioned by a combination of transfer effects from English and principles of UG, rather than by the effect of parameter resetting. In Christopher's acquisition of Epun we began with a core of ‘normal’ constructions, designed to make him feel at home in the new language, and then proceeded to investigate a range of impossible constructions, both structure-dependent and structure-independent. In the former case, we concentrated on negative sentences, constructed with no overt negative morpheme, and past-tense sentences which involve unattested and putatively impossible word-order differences. In the latter case, we concentrated on a rule of emphasis that involved counting words, and a form of agreement which again violated putatively universal generalisations. In each case we compared Christopher's performance with that of a small group of controls. The results were complex, but we think we can justify an interpretation which lends support to both the main hypotheses being tested.

We provide a preliminary report on a young man who is institutionalised because he is unable to look after himself, but who has a remarkable talent for acquiring and using foreign languages. After documenting the breadth of his expertise across some sixteen languages, we investigate his command of his native language, English, and the extent to which his linguistic competence is integrated into his general cognitive ability, and we briefly discuss the implications of these results for Fodor's modularity hypothesis. The results of the experiments devised to test these aspects of his linguistic and inferential abilities then provide the basis for a more detailed analysis of his command of one specific language, Modern Greek. We concentrate on properties associated with the pro-drop parameter, in particular that-t effects and the possibility of post-verbal subjects, contrasting his performance in Greek, a pro-drop language, with English, a non-pro-drop language. The pattern of results obtained indicate that he is not acquiring a ‘first’ language several times over, but it remains for future investigation to determine how characteristic of normal second-language learners his acquisition is. We also tentatively interpret his performance in Greek as evidence in favour of the claim that the phenomena associated with the pro-drop parameter do constitute a natural class, and specifically provide support for Rizzi's revision of the parameter in terms of relativised minimality. We emphasize that these results are preliminary and hope to refine and extend our analyses in subsequent contributions.