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.

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

It is debated what exactly Elicited Imitation Tasks (EITs) measure; more specifically, it is not clear to what extent language ability andworking memory capacityare involved.Some researchers note that language abilities are more prevalent in those tasks, since participants focus on the meaning of the sentence in order to retrieveit(DeKeyser,2003; Ellis, 2005; Erlam, 2006).Furthermore, language proficiency affects task performance (Bley-Vroman& Chaudron, 1994; Munnich, Flynn & Martohardjono,1994).On the other hand, there is a debate regardingthe role of memory in EITs. Some studies argue that the contributionof memory, either working memory (WM) or short-term memory (STM) is critical for accurate performance (Alloway &Gathercole, 2005; Alloway, Gathercole,Willis & Adams, 2004).Otherspoint out the involvementof further cognitive abilities, such as episodic buffer(Baddeley & Wilson, 2002) or metalinguistic awareness (Bialystok 1991). Fewstudies claim that EITs do not entail any linguistic processing and are based onrote memory capacity (Hamayan, Saegert, & Larudee, 1977),whereasthere are also studies whichdo notfind a correlation between EIT and WM tasks (Okura& Lonsdale, 2012).More recent studies demonstrate that both language abilities and cognitive skills are neededin EITs (Riches, 2012; Klem,Melby-Lervaog, Hagtvet,Lyster,Gustafsson &Hulme,2015). To our knowledge, there are no studies that explored the role of other executive functions(i.e. updating)in the performance onEITs.

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

 The present study aims at exploring: (a) the role of the educational settingin the acquisition of aspect and executive functions (i.e. updating) skills, (b)the acquisition of the aspectual features in Greek-German bilingualchildren and (c) the impact of updating on the acquisition of aspect.Imperfective aspect has been found to be acquired later than perfectivein previous studies. Moreover, a bilingual educational setting seems toenhance not only cognitive but also linguistic abilities. The participantsof the present study are Greek-German bilingual children, who attend abilingual or a Greek dominant educational setting. They were tested intwo baseline tasks, two linguistic tasks and an executive function,updating, task. Thefindings reveal that bilinguals who attend amonolingual educational setting performed similarly to the monolingualcontrol group on aspect, whereas bilinguals who attend a bilingualeducational setting scored lower than the monolinguals. In the updatingtask, the students of the bilingual educational setting scored higher thanthe other groups. Overall, ourfindings suggest that the bilingualeducational setting seems to boost executive function (updating) skills,while the acquisition of aspect is affected by vocabulary knowledge.