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This study presents an investigation of language skills in a male child with DiGeorge syndrome (DGS), an autosomal dominant genetic disorder caused by a microdeletion on the long arm of chromosome 22. The syndrome is associated with an extensive and variable phenotype which includes mild differences in facial features, congenital heart disease, defects in the palate, recurrent ear infections, and learning problems as well as behavioural and social interaction difficulties. Delayed language onset and persistent language impairment in preschool ages have been described in the literature, though not much is known about language skills of DGS children across languages. The purpose of this study is to describe the language profile of a single child with DGS for Greek using case-based methodology, and to compare his performance on structured language tasks with those reported for preschool children with and without specific language impairment from our database on the same tools. The participant was born in Cyprus to Greek Cypriot parents. He was close to 6 years of age when testing began and enrolled in a normal mainstream preschool at the time of the study. He was receiving speech therapy on a weekly basis focused on his articulation and voice problems. He had fluent, overall intelligible speech and was social. There was no evidence of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder on oneto-one testing. Non-verbal intelligence was measured with Raven’s Coloured Progressive Matrices, while global language scores for receptive and expressive language abilities were derived from the Diagnostic Verbal IQ Test prior to the testing on structured language tasks. Receptive vocabulary knowledge was assessed on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, expressive vocabulary on the Expressive Vocabulary Test. Structural language testing involved clitic production and a narrative retell task. The findings will be discussed in relation to two hypotheses, namely either that the profile of language impairment in children with DGS may be distinctive to the syndrome or that there is the possibility of co-morbidity of specific language impairment in DGS.

This study investigates the production and placement of direct object clitic pronouns in children with specific language impairment (SLI). A total of 38 bilectal children were divided into four groups: two groups of children with SLI and two groups of age-matched typically developing children; 5-year-olds in the younger and 7-year-olds in the older groups. The goals of the study were (i) to investigate whether object clitics could serve as a clinical marker for Cypriot Greek-speaking children with SLI, (ii) to explore whether there are any quantitative and/or qualitative differences between typical language development and SLI, and (iii) to determine possible differences between the age groups. The design of the experiment aimed to shed some light on the question whether children with SLI exhibit difficulties with clitic production in the context assessed. The results reported here do not support the cross-linguistic finding that clitic production could serve as a clinical marker for SLI in Cypriot Greek. However, what seems to be at stake is clitic (mis)placement, and the findings provide some evidence that there is more than meets the eye concerning the theoretical discussion around the use of clitics in Greek Cypriot children's language development.

This paper reports lexical and morphosyntactic abilities of a 9-year-old boy with high functioning autism. With a Russian mother and a Greek Cypriot father, the participant, Y.S., is a native speaker of Russian and Cypriot Greek, while Standard Modern Greek was acquired upon early school entry at age 4. METHODS Y.S. was assessed on three measures tapping into lexical access via picture confrontation naming: the Vocabulary subtest of the Developmental Verbal Intelligence Quotient (Stavrakaki & Tsimpli, 2000), the standardized Greek version of the Renfrew Word Finding Vocabulary Test (Sideris, 2009; original: Renfrew, 1997), and the Cypriot Object and Action Test (Kambanaros et al., 2012; original: Kambanaros, 2003). His lexical abilities were further examined using the Definition subtest of the Athina Test (Paraskevopoulos et al., 1999). Morphosyntactic abilities were assessed using the DVIQ subtests Morphosyntactic Comprehension and Production. In addition, Y.S.’s performance on the following three measures of our own Greek adaptation of the Bus Story Test (Renfrew, 1997) was considered: number of subordinates, five longest sentences, and MLU-word. Moreover, Y.S. was assessed on the metalinguistic and sentence repetition subtests of the DVIQ, on the Raven’s Coloured Progressive Matrices (Raven et al., 2000), on the Greek version of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Simos et al., 2011; original: Dunn & Dunn, 1981), the Phoneme Discrimination subtest of the Athina Test (Paraskevopoulos et al., 1999), and on our own Greek adaptation of the Concept–Word Association Test (in collaboration with Naama Friedmann). Finally, his teacher completed the Greek version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997), describing Y.S.’s behavior in the classroom and with peers. RESULTS Y.S.’s performance on the measures conducted reveal a significant discrepancy between comprehension and production, with comprehension relatively intact, while production is severely impaired for both lexicon and morphosyntax. DISCUSSION We will present our results for Y.S. using a multiple case study approach where his performance will be compared to both multilingual and bilectal Cypriot Greek (L1)–Standard Modern Greek (L2) male individuals with and without specific language impairment (SLI), matched on non-verbal performance who have been tested on all the measures reported above. Our findings will be discussed in relation to the Autism as SLI Plus Hypothesis (Bishop, 2003) with reference to psycholinguistic models of multilingualism (Marini & Fabbro, 2007).

Investigating children’s language skills in their native variety is of paramount importance. Clinical practices cannot be based on findings from languages or varieties which have different properties. This paper, after demonstrating the importance of investigating Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in Cyprus, assesses the feasibility of existing language assessments in Standard Modern Greek for the diagnosis of SLI in the Greek Cypriot context, for the children’s native variety of Cypriot Greek. In total, 16 children with SLI (5 to 9 years) and 22 age-matched typically language developing children participated in this study. However, given that not all stimuli in the Standard Greek versions were appropriate for Cypriot Greek-speaking children and because of cultural differences, the tools were adapted. Results showed that the assessment tools can accurately identify children with SLI from typically language developing peers with sensitivity and specificity when the comparison is between children that use the same variety. Keywords: acquisition; bilectalism; diagnosis; sensitivity; specificity

It is important to investigate children’s language skills in their native linguistic variety because diagnosis, and intervention (therapy), cannot be based on findings from other languages or varieties which have different properties. Likewise, all first language assessments must be appropriate for children who acquire their native variety — in the present study, Cypriot Greek (CG). This paper assesses the utility of existing tools in the diagnosis of specific language impairment (SLI) in CG. In total, 16 children with SLI ranging from 5 to 9 years of age and 22 age-matched typically developing children participated in this study. Results showed that the existing tools can be used to identify children with SLI, but only when the comparison is between children that use the same variety. However, a proper adaptation to CG is needed, given that due to cultural and linguistic differences, not all the stimuli from the Standard Greek versions were equally appropriate for Greek Cypriot children, who are here termed bilectal in the two linguistic varieties.

This paper investigates the development of relative clauses in Cypriot Greek (CG) in particular, young children s comprehension and production of subject relatives (SRs) and object relatives (ORs). A total of thirty-three monolingual children aged between 5 and 9 years acquiring CG as their native language (variety) participated in this study. Two different tasks were used to examine the acquisition of restrictive relative clauses: (i) a Picture Pointing Task, modified from Friedmann and Novogrodsky (2004), was used to investigate the auditory comprehension of SRs and ORs, and (ii) a Preference Task, modified from Novogrodsky and Friedmann (2006), was employed to examine the production of SRs and ORs. Crosslinguistic research provides evidence that children experience difficulties in the acquisition of ORs, whereas this does not seem to be the case for SRs (McKee and McDaniel, 2001; Stathopoulou, 2007). The on-going study on the acquisition of SRs and ORs in CG, the first in the literature for this language variety, so far appears to confirm the difficulty attested for other languages that children display in the acquisition of ORs.