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.

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*, Eirini-Chrysovalantou Koutsipetsidou**
Democritus University of Thrace*
Queen Margaret University of Edinburgh**

The aim of the present study is twofold: (a) to examine linguistic and cognitive abilities in Greek-speaking children with Developmental Dyslexia (DD) or Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), and (b) to detect whether the performance on Sentence Repetition Task (SRT) is affected by (verbal) working memory (WM) abilities.Previous studies have indicated that children with bothDLDand DD have lower linguistic and WMabilitiesin comparison to their peers. More recent studies focus on the interaction of these two abilities, indicating that the linguistic deficit is driven by the cognitive deficit. Sentence Repetition Task (SRT) isan appropriate and reliable tool for measuring both linguistic and cognitive abilities. For this reason, we tested 30 monolingual children (with DD, DLD and non-impaired controls) by means of an SRTand a verbal working memorytask(VWMT). The results have shown that both clinical groups had lower linguistic and cognitive abilitiesthan the control group; however the DLD group show a lower performance on the SRTboth in terms of accuracy and grammaticality in comparison to the DD group.Interestingly,we found that theperformanceon the VWMT predicts the accuracy on the SRT, while lexical knowledge predicts thegrammaticalityscores in both clinical groups, albeit not in the control group.From our findings we deduce that(a) both clinical groups have impaired linguistic and cognitive abilities; however the DLD group encounters more difficulties withtheir linguistic abilities and (b) SRT measures both morphosyntactic abilitiesand WM abilities, as different predictor variables have a different impact on participants’performance.

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.