Abstract
This paper examines the development of object clitic placement by children acquiring Cypriot Greek. Greek-speaking Cyprus is sociolinguistically characterized by diglossia between two varieties of Greek, the local Cypriot Greek and the official Standard Modern Greek. Arguably as a result of this situation, clitics may be placed post- (enclisis) or preverbally (proclisis) in the same syntactic environment; while the former is a property of Cypriot Greek, the latter is typically considered an effect of the standard language. The following issues are investigated here: (a) how such bilectal speakers distinguish between the two Greek varieties with respect to clitic placement; (b) how the acquisition of clitics develops over time; (c) how, and which, sociolinguistic factors determine clitic placement; and (d) how schooling may affect clitic placement. To address (a)–(d), a sentence completion task was used to elicit clitic productions, administered to 431 children around Cyprus ranging from 2;8 to 8;11. The C5.0 machine-learning algorithm was employed to model the interaction of (socio-)linguistic factors on the development of clitic placement. The model shows that speakers acquire the relevant features very early, yet compartmentalization of form and function according to style emerges only as they engage in the larger speech community. In addition, the effects of sociolinguistic factors on clitic placement appear gradually.
Highlights
Language acquisition is assumed to proceed uniformly (Lenneberg, 1967)
After 100 months (8 years 6 months), postverbal placement increases again. We expect this rise to continue until 100% postverbal production achieved during puberty, as observed in the studies by Grohmann et al (2012) and Agathocleous et al (2014), who provide data, using the same testing tool, from adolescents who clearly settle for Cypriot Greek (CG) enclisis only
The results demonstrate that, as children grow up, proclisis associated with the H-variety (i.e., Standard Modern Greek (SMG) or something close to it such as Cypriot Standard Greek (CSG)) steadily increases in children’s speech, whereas enclisis associated with the L-variety (i.e., CG) decreases
Summary
Language acquisition is assumed to proceed uniformly (Lenneberg, 1967). For example, across languages children between 6 and 8 months of age start to babble; at about 10–12 months, they produce and understand some words; and at around 2 years, they combine words. This study revisits the research presented in the study by Grohmann (2014a) on the acquisition of (preverbal vs postverbal) object clitic placement in Cyprus, a sociolinguistically diverse environment, which is traditionally characterized by diglossia (Newton, 1972, in the sense of Ferguson, 1959), understood linguistically as “(discrete) bilectalism” (Rowe and Grohmann, 2013). In this environment, clitic placement displays features that are both Cypriot Greek (canonically enclisis) and Standard Modern Greek (proclisis by default). Note that other than the many Greek citizens who live in Cyprus [29,321 as per the Statistical Service of Cyprus (CYSTAT) (2011)2], the Greek-speaking population of Cyprus employs the CG variety in one form or another on a regular basis, if not predominantly, in their day-to-day linguistic experiences
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