Ifigeneia Dosi
Democritus University of Thrace

In diesem Beitrag werden die verschiedenen Funktionen des Pronomens es untersucht, wobei der Schwerpunkt auf dessen Darstellung in einer Reihe von Grammatiken, in Lehr-Grammatiken und verschiedenen Lehrwerken für Deutsch als Fremdsprache (im Folgenden DaF) liegt. Die Bearbeitung erfolgt mit dem Ziel. Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten in der Präsentation der Funktionen des es zu erörtern. Danach folgt ein Vergleich zwischen den Grammatiken, den Lehr-Grammatiken und den Lehrwerken, um zu untersuchen: (a) wie die Funktionen des Pronomens dargestellt werden, und (b) inwieweit sich die Lehr-Grammatiken und die Grammatikpräsentationen in Lehrwerken bezüglich der Darstellung der Funktionen von es unterscheiden. Schließlich wird ein Vorschlag für Lehrwerke unterbreitet, der einerseits das Pronomen es anhand seiner syntaktischen und semantischen Eigenschaften darstellt und der andererseits Möglichkeiten aufzeigt, die effektives Lernen in DaF bewirken.

Ifigeneia Dosi*, Selini Kamoura
Democritus University of Thrace*

There has beena long debate whetherElicited Imitation Tasks (EITs) measure linguistic skills, or they are more based on the rote memory skills. Some studies have noted that the role of memory (either working memory or short term memory) is crucial for the performance on EITs (Alloway and Gathercole, 2005; Alloway, Gathercole, Willis and Adams, 2004). Few studies have claimed that the contribution of memory is more important than the contribution of language to EITs performance (Hamayan, Saegert, and Larudee, 1977). Nonetheless, other studies have not observed the impact of memory on the performance in EITs (Okura and Lonsdale 2012, Dosi, Papadopoulou and Tsimpli, 2016). There ishowever,a great number of recent studies which maintain that EITs draw on both language ability and cognitive resources,primarily from working memory (Riches, 2012; Klem, Melby-Lervaog, Hagtvet, Lyster, Gustafsson and Hulme, 2015), especially when the sentences are quite short (Fattal, Friedmann and Fattla-Valevski, 2011), since language processing is less demanding in short sentencesand memory abilities are more possible to affect the participants’ performance (Alloway et al., 2004). Language proficiency also seems to affect the performance on the task (Bley-Vroman and Chaudron, 1994; Munnich, Flynn and Martohardjono, 1994). Limited is the evidence about Greek native speakers, who learn English as a second language (L2), such data would be useful for the educators to plan a more targeted lesson.

The present study investigates the language and working memory skills of native speakers of Greek, who learn English as a L2. Additionally, it also takes into account the aforementioned issues in order to test whether (a) EITs measure both linguistic and (verbal) working memory abilities and (b)language proficiency hasanyimpact on participants’ performance. Hence, in the present study eight participantstook part; half of them (n=4) were intermediate learners of English and the other half (n=4) were advanced learners of English.

Ifigeneia Dosi*, Ianthi Tsimpli**, Despina Papadopoulou***
Democritus University of Thrace*
University of Cambridge**
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki*

The present study investigates the comprehension of perfective and imperfective aspect in Greek-English bilingual children. Previous work on L2 acquisition of aspect indicates that imperfective aspect appears later than perfective aspect in the marking of past events across various languages (Andersen & Shirai 1996; Bardovi-Harlig 2000) and that the [+ habitual] feature of imperfective aspect, appears later than the [+ continuous] feature (Bardovi-Harlig & Reynolds 1995; Shirai 2002); the same pattern also holds for adult learners of L2 Greek (Mattheoudakis et al. 2011; Papadopoulou 2005). Sixty children, thirty Greek-English bilinguals and thirty Greek monolinguals, completed a forced choice oral task, in which they had to select between the perfective and imperfective aspect of a specific verb. The task consisted of short stories which tested three ex-perimental conditions: perfective, [+ continuous] imperfective and [+ habitual] imperfective; for each condition individual stories with and without temporal conjunctions were provided. The results revealed that the perfective aspect was successfully acquired, while problems with the imperfective aspect are evident, especially when the imperfective sentences denote habituality. The participants’ performance suggests no association between the presence of conjunctions and the decoding of aspect. Interestingly, a significant correlation was found between children’s vocabulary level and their performance on aspect.