This article explores the nuances in the type of diglossic society in Cyprus towards a characterization of the precise stage of diglossic progression that accurately describes the current sociolinguistic state of Greek-speaking Cyprus. The question concerns the identification of that status as diglossic, as standardwith-dialects (social dialectia), or as bidialectal. We propose that the society can be characterized as diglossic, likely moving towards diaglossia. The term co-overt prestige is also introduced here, juxtaposed both with canonical Bourdieuan overt prestige and with the concept of covert prestige (Trudgill 1972), a juxtaposition which drives the classification. This article also puts forth the notion of (discrete) bilectalism to capture the "linguality" of Greek Cypriot speakers, that is, bilectal in the local vernacular, the L variety (Cypriot Greek), and the superposed official language, the H variety (Standard Modern Greek), thereby refuting the notion of a continuum bridging the two varieties. The case is also made here that studying language acquisition and development in diglossic societies contributes to a better understanding of discrete linguistic systems in children and fully developed speakers alike.

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AbstractThe cognitive benefits of bilingualism have an impact on the processing mechanisms that are active during the acquisition process in a way that results in language variation. Within bilingual populations, the notion of “language proximity” is also of key importance for deriving variation. Certain sociolinguistic factors can invest the process of language development and its outcome with an additional layer of complexity that results from the emergence of mesolectal varieties which blur the boundaries of grammatical variants. We report data on the acquisition and development of object clitic placement in the two varieties of Greek spoken in Cyprus, and on performance in executive control tasks by monolingual, bilectal, and bi-/multilingual children. Comparing findings across experiments, the present study identifies the different factors that define “bilectalism” within the greater context of multilingualism, merging sociolinguistic and neurocognitive insights about language variation and how they inform development in diglossic contexts that involve closely related varieties—a study in comparative linguality.

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