Aim: The present study examines input and literacy effects in simultaneous and sequential bilinguals with the aim of (a) investigating the differences between bilingual and monolingual populations and (b) disentangling the individual contribution of different factors in bilingual syntactic abilities. Methodology: A sentence repetition task (SRT) in Greek with eight structures (Subject Verb Object [SVO], negative clauses, clitic structures, complement clauses, coordinated sentences, adverbial clauses, wh-questions and relative clauses) was employed. All bilinguals additionally participated in a standardized expressive vocabulary task in Greek to measure their lexical ability. Data: Sixty 8–10-year-old children (20 monolingual, 20 simultaneous and 20 late sequential bilinguals) were tested. Findings: The analysis showed that (a) monolinguals outperform sequential bilinguals in sentence repetition, (b) clitic structures are highly problematic for all participants, (c) vocabulary and syntactic skills are closely related for simultaneous but not for sequential bilinguals, (d) home language practices in the early years affect SRT performance and (e) sequential bilinguals benefit from literacy practices that support syntactic skills in the language tested. Overall, we found that the effect of input overrides the effect of a traditionally categorical factor in bilingualism: age of onset (AoO) of exposure to L2. Originality: The contribution of this study includes (a) the examination of syntactic abilities in bilinguals in connection with language input early in life and at the time of testing, (b) the non-pervasive role of age of exposure to the L2 in SRT performance and (c) the role of literacy measures as key factors affecting syntactic skills in bilinguals. Implications: Quality of input and literacy in particular have been shown to affect bilingual syntactic skills, suggesting that enhancing literacy exposure as a language policy for bilinguals has a significantly positive impact on language development.

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.

Background: Diadochokinetic rates tasks are frequently used for the assessment of diadochokinesia (DKK) in young and elderly adults. However, there is scarce research on healthy elderly adults over 65 years old, and little is known about the effect of different types of stimuli (non-words/real words) in this specific population. Furthermore, the current research supports significant language variations, highlighting the need for language-specific norms. Aims:To investigate the effect of age, gender and type of stimuli (non-words versus real words) in DDK rates in healthy elderly adults of over 65 years of age, and to provide normative data for the Greek language.Methods & Procedures: The participants were 791 healthy monolingual Greekspeaking adults (531 adults, aged 20-39 years; 157 participants aged 65-74 years; and 103 participants aged over 75 years). All participants were monolingual speakers of Greek and had normal hearing acuity, which allowed them to understand and follow instructions. Participants with a medical condition, which would affect DDK rates' performance, were excluded from the study. The timeby-count method was used, and all participants had to repeat as accurately and fast as possible: (1) four disyllabic non-words (/′gaba/, /′taka/, /′kata/, /′baga/);(2) four disyllabic real words (/′kapa/, /′tapa/, /ka′la/, /′paka/); and (3) two trisyllabic non-words (/′pataka/, /′badaga/). All responses were recorded and the speech samples that did not include at least 5 s of correct repetitions were excluded from the analysis.Outcomes & Results: Age affected DDK rates significantly, with older adults achieving slower DDK rates for all speech stimuli (non-words/real words). Gender did not have an effect on the performance of DDK rates. The type of speech stimuli affected DDK rates significantly for all age groups. Analytically, trisyllabic non-word stimuli were articulated more slowly than disyllabic non-word stimuli, and real words were produced faster than nonwords. A linear regression analysis revealed that only the repetition of nonwords predicted 68.4% of the performance on the repetition of trisyllabic non-words.

This study examined the performance of Greek monolingual typically developing (TD) children on diadochokinetic (DDK) rates in real words and non-words and attempted to establish normative data for Greek. The effects of age, type of stimuli and gender were investigated. A total of 380 children aged 4.0–15.0 years as well as a control group of 313 adults participated in the study. Age significantly affected DDK performance, yet normative data differ from other studies. DDK rates for bisyllabic stimuli were faster than DDK rates for trisyllabic stimuli and real words were articulated faster than non-words. Adolescents aged 13.0–15.0 years were slower than adults both in real word and in non-word /ˈpataka/ repetition. Additionally, overall boys were significantly faster than girls. These findings show the need to: (a) implement real word stimuli in DDK tasks in order to better depict an individual’s oral-motor abilities and (b) establish language-specific normative data for TD children.

This study examines the L2 acquisition of English pronominal subjects by Greek learners and its possible causes. It also considers the factors that affect pronoun resolution in L1 Greek. Null pronominal subjects were found to be used even by advanced learners, especially in topic-continuity contexts. This is attributed to the transfer of the L1 property of null subjects and to the interpretive effects thereby achieved. Regarding pronoun resolution in Greek, we found that the syntactic constraint related to the null/overt realization of pronominal subjects is such a decisive factor that its effect surfaces even when antecedents are pragmatically inferred.