Greek English Research Articles

The effect of childhood bilectalism and multilingualism on executive control

Several investigations report a positive effect of childhood bilingualism on executive control (EC). An issue that has remained largely unexamined is the role of the typological distance between the languages spoken by bilinguals. In the present study we focus on children who grow up with Cypriot Greek and Standard Modern Greek, two closely related varieties that differ from each other on all levels of language analysis (vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar). We compare the EC performance of such bilectal children to that of English–Greek multilingual children in Cyprus and Standard Modern Greek-speaking monolingual children in Greece. A principal component analysis on six indicators of EC revealed two distinct factors, which we interpreted as representing working memory and inhibition. Multilingual and bilectal children exhibited an advantage over monolinguals that was evident across EC factors and emerged only after statistically controlling for their lower language proficiency. These results demonstrate that similar EC advantages as previously reported for ‘true’ bilingual speakers can be found in bilectal children, which suggests that minimal typological distance between the varieties spoken by a child suffices to give rise to advantages in EC. They further indicate that the effect of speaking more than one language or dialect on EC performance is located across the EC system without a particular component being selectively affected. This has implications for models of the locus of the bilingual advantage in EC performance. Finally, they show that the emergence of EC advantages in bilinguals is moderated by the level of their language proficiency.

Gr. ἔρι-, ved.2ṛ undarí-, die uridg. Wurzel *h1er- ~ *h1ar- und uridg. *h1ér- ~ *h1ár- ‚ Widder, Schafbock‘

English abstract Greek ἔρι- f., ἔριφο- m.f., Latin ariēs m., etc. and Vedic 2 ṛ and arí- all have the same PIE root etymology. This root *h1er- ~ *h1ar- had a polysemous meaning HIT, MEET, COME UPON, CONTACT, PUT/COME/BE TOGETHER, FIT, SUIT, … Greek ἔρι- f. ultimately goes back to a PIE root noun *h1ér- (plus *-i- → PIE *h1éri-) with a meaning comparable to the German verbs aneinandergeraten, aufeinandertreffen, zusammenstoßen.

Direct Written Corrective Feedback, Learner Differences, and the Acquisition of Second Language Article Use for Generic and Specific Plural Reference

This article reports on a classroom‐based study that investigated the effectiveness of direct written corrective feedback in relation to learner differences in grammatical sensitivity and knowledge of metalanguage. The study employed a pretest–posttest–delayed posttest design with two treatment sessions. Eighty‐nine Greek English as a foreign language (EFL) learners were randomly assigned to 3 groups: direct feedback only, direct feedback plus metalinguistic comments, and comparison. The linguistic target was article use for specific and generic plural reference. A text summary and a truth value judgment test were employed to measure any development in learners’ ability to use articles. The results revealed an advantage for receiving direct feedback over no feedback, but provided no clear evidence for the benefit of supplying metalinguistic information. Additionally, participants with greater grammatical sensitivity and knowledge of metalanguage proved more likely to achieve gains in the direct feedback only group.

A cross-lingual similarity measure for detecting biomedical term translations.

Bilingual dictionaries for technical terms such as biomedical terms are an important resource for machine translation systems as well as for humans who would like to understand a concept described in a foreign language. Often a biomedical term is first proposed in English and later it is manually translated to other languages. Despite the fact that there are large monolingual lexicons of biomedical terms, only a fraction of those term lexicons are translated to other languages. Manually compiling large-scale bilingual dictionaries for technical domains is a challenging task because it is difficult to find a sufficiently large number of bilingual experts. We propose a cross-lingual similarity measure for detecting most similar translation candidates for a biomedical term specified in one language (source) from another language (target). Specifically, a biomedical term in a language is represented using two types of features: (a) intrinsic features that consist of character n-grams extracted from the term under consideration, and (b) extrinsic features that consist of unigrams and bigrams extracted from the contextual windows surrounding the term under consideration. We propose a cross-lingual similarity measure using each of those feature types. First, to reduce the dimensionality of the feature space in each language, we propose prototype vector projection (PVP)—a non-negative lower-dimensional vector projection method. Second, we propose a method to learn a mapping between the feature spaces in the source and target language using partial least squares regression (PLSR). The proposed method requires only a small number of training instances to learn a cross-lingual similarity measure. The proposed PVP method outperforms popular dimensionality reduction methods such as the singular value decomposition (SVD) and non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) in a nearest neighbor prediction task. Moreover, our experimental results covering several language pairs such as English–French, English–Spanish, English–Greek, and English–Japanese show that the proposed method outperforms several other feature projection methods in biomedical term translation prediction tasks.

Domain adaptation of statistical machine translation with domain-focused web crawling.

In this paper, we tackle the problem of domain adaptation of statistical machine translation (SMT) by exploiting domain-specific data acquired by domain-focused crawling of text from the World Wide Web. We design and empirically evaluate a procedure for automatic acquisition of monolingual and parallel text and their exploitation for system training, tuning, and testing in a phrase-based SMT framework. We present a strategy for using such resources depending on their availability and quantity supported by results of a large-scale evaluation carried out for the domains of environment and labour legislation, two language pairs (English–French and English–Greek) and in both directions: into and from English. In general, machine translation systems trained and tuned on a general domain perform poorly on specific domains and we show that such systems can be adapted successfully by retuning model parameters using small amounts of parallel in-domain data, and may be further improved by using additional monolingual and parallel training data for adaptation of language and translation models. The average observed improvement in BLEU achieved is substantial at 15.30 points absolute.

Increase in Speech Recognition due to Linguistic Mismatch Between Target and Masker Speech: Monolingual and Simultaneous Bilingual Performance

To examine whether improved speech recognition during linguistically mismatched target-masker experiments is due to linguistic unfamiliarity of the masker speech or linguistic dissimilarity between the target and masker speech. Monolingual English speakers (n = 20) and English-Greek simultaneous bilinguals (n = 20) listened to English sentences in the presence of competing English and Greek speech. Data were analyzed using mixed-effects regression models to determine differences in English recogition performance between the 2 groups and 2 masker conditions. Results indicated that English sentence recognition for monolinguals and simultaneous English-Greek bilinguals improved when the masker speech changed from competing English to competing Greek speech. The improvement in speech recognition that has been observed for linguistically mismatched target-masker experiments cannot be simply explained by the masker language being linguistically unknown or unfamiliar to the listeners. Listeners can improve their speech recognition in linguistically mismatched target-masker experiments even when the listener is able to obtain meaningful linguistic information from the masker speech.

Focusing the lens of language experience: Perception of Ma'di stops by Greek and English bilinguals and monolinguals

Monolingual listeners are constrained by native language experience when categorizing and discriminating unfamiliar non-native contrasts. Are early bilinguals constrained in the same way by their two languages, or do they possess an advantage? Greek-English bilinguals in either Greek or English language mode were compared to monolinguals on categorization and discrimination of Ma'di stop-voicing distinctions that are non-native to both languages. As predicted, English monolinguals categorized Ma'di prevoiced plosive and implosive stops and the coronal voiceless stop as English voiced stops. The Greek monolinguals categorized the Ma'di short-lag voiceless stops as Greek voiceless stops, and the prevoiced implosive stops and the coronal prevoiced stop as Greek voiced stops. Ma'di prenasalized stops were uncategorized. Greek monolinguals discriminated the non-native voiced-voiceless contrasts very well, whereas the English monolinguals did poorly. Bilinguals were given all oral and written instructions either in English or in Greek (language mode manipulation). Each language mode subgroup categorized Ma'di stop-voicing comparably to the corresponding monolingual group. However, the bilinguals' discrimination was unaffected by language mode: both subgroups performed intermediate to the monolinguals for the prevoiced-voiceless contrast. Thus, bilinguals do not possess an advantage for unfamiliar non-native contrasts, but are nonetheless uniquely configured language users, differing from either monolingual group.

The Greek of the Septuagint: A Supplemental Lexicon (review)

Reviewed by: The Greek of the Septuagint: A Supplemental Lexicon W. Edward Glenny The Greek of the Septuagint: A Supplemental Lexicon. By Gary Alan Chamberlain. Pp. xlii + 256. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 2011. Cloth, $39.95. This lexicon was a labor of love over a quarter of a century by a man who does not earn his keep in the academy, but instead in financial services. Gary Alan Chamberlain was motivated to do this work by his "interest in understanding the Scriptures," and "the method and the goal of preparing this lexicon have been the reading of the LXX text itself (alongside the Hebrew Bible, the Greek NT, and not infrequently the Vulgate) with the prayerful attention the Benedictines call lectio divina" (p. xxix). However, Chamberlain has also read the LXX critically, reviewing every textual variant in the apparatus of Rahlf's LXX along the way. He has also employed many of the main resources available for biblical and classical scholarship, especially lexical resources. His goal is ultimately to complete a full lexicon of the Greek of the LXX, which would give precise parallels for all LXX meanings wherever such exist in Greek literature (p. x). In this review, I will attempt to summarize his preface ("The Design and Use of This Lexicon," pp. vii-x) and his introduction ("The Character of the Septuagint Vocabulary," pp. xi-xxix) and then briefly evaluate his lexicon. Chamberlain's lexicon is meant to be a supplement to BDAG (W. Bauer, F. W. Danker, W. F. Arndt, and F. W. Gingrich. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature [3rd ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000]), like G. W. H. Lampe's lexicon (A Patristic Greek Lexicon [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961-1968]) is meant to be a supplement to Liddell/Scott/Jones (LSJ; the last edition of which is H. G. Liddel and R. Scott. A Greek English Lexicon [9th ed. with a revised supplement; revised by H. S. Jones; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996]). Chamberlain is aware of recent LXX lexicons, and he employs Lust, Eynikel, and Hauspie (J. Lust, E. Eynikel, and K. Hauspie, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint [2 vols.; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1992 and 1996]); however, Muraoka's excellent LXX lexicon (T. Muraoka, A Greek English Lexicon to the Septuagint [Louvain: Peeters, 2009]) was not completed until shortly before the publication of Chamberlain's, and thus there is no evidence of its use in Chamberlain's lexicon that I can see. (It is not listed in the abbreviations for his main sources. It also appears Chamberlain did not use the two earlier editions of Muraoka's lexicon [1993 and 2002]). In order to supplement BDAG for the LXX, Chamberlain employs the following four principles. First, he does not treat the most common Greek words, since the range of meaning of these words is essentially the same in the LXX as is given in BDAG, and readers with a modest command of New Testament Greek should need no help with them. Second, for less [End Page 394] common words which occur in early Christian literature in the sense they are found in the LXX, the reader can almost always find the LXX meaning in BDAG; thus he does not treat these words either. Third, when the LXX has additional senses for a word that go beyond the range of meaning in BDAG, Chamberlain supplements the discussion in BDAG. Here he provides some help for the LXX reader, which at times differs slightly from the LXX lexicons mentioned above; however, the recent Septuagint lexicons by Lust, Eynikel, and Hauspie and Muraoka would probably be adequate for this class of words. Fourth, Chamberlain has composed new lexical articles for words that are not in BDAG or whose meaning differs substantially from their meaning in the New Testament. Chamberlain's treatment of these words looks like it would be helpful, because he deals with transliterations, proper names, and place names, which Lust, Eynikel, and Hauspie and Muraoka do not do and because of his understanding of LXX Greek. That leads to the second topic of this review, Chamberlain's understanding of the character of...

Inter-language interference in VOT production by L2-dominant bilinguals: Asymmetries in phonetic code-switching

Speech production research has demonstrated that the first language (L1) often interferes with production in bilinguals' second language (L2), but it has been suggested that bilinguals who are L2-dominant are the most likely to suppress this L1-interference. While prolonged contextual changes in bilinguals' language use (e.g., stays overseas) are known to result in L1 and L2 phonetic shifts, code-switching provides the unique opportunity of observing the immediate phonetic effects of L1–L2 interaction. We measured the voice onset times (VOTs) of Greek–English bilinguals' productions of /b, d, p, t/ in initial and medial contexts, first in either a Greek or English unilingual mode, and in a later session when they produced the same target pseudowords as a code-switch from the opposing language. Compared to a unilingual mode, all English stops produced as code-switches from Greek, regardless of context, had more Greek-like VOTs. In contrast, Greek stops showed no shift toward English VOTs, with the exception of medial voiced stops. Under the specifically interlanguage condition of code-switching we have demonstrated a pervasive influence of the L1 even in L2-dominant individuals.

Profiling performance in L1 and L2 observed in Greek–English bilingual aphasia using the Bilingual Aphasia Test: a case study from Cyprus

The Greek and the English versions of the Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT) were used to assess the linguistic abilities of a premorbidly highly proficient late bilingual female after a haemorrhagic cerebrovascular accident involving the left temporo-parietal lobe. The BAT was administered in the two languages on separate occasions by the first author, a bilingual English–Greek speech pathologist. The results revealed a non-parallel recovery in the two languages. This information will be used not only to guide clinical intervention for the patient but also to provide the first report on the manifestations of aphasia in Greek. Moreover, the use of the (Standard Modern) Greek version of the BAT to investigate Greek Cypriot aphasics has implications for the use of the BAT on underspecified languages or dialects. Such studies may help with the development of assessment measures and therapy strategies that focus on specific characteristics of one or multiple languages.

Co-activation of syntax in bilingual language production

We report four experiments that examined whether bilinguals’ production of one language is affected by the syntactic properties of their other language. Greek–English and English–Greek highly proficient fluent bilinguals produced sentence completions following subject nouns whose translation had either the same or different number. We manipulated whether participants produced completions in the same language as the subject (the source language; one-language production) or the other language (the non-source language; two-language production), and whether they used only one language or both languages within the experimental session. The results demonstrated that the grammar systems of both languages were activated during both one-language and two-language production. The effects of the non-source language were particularly enhanced in two-language utterances, when both languages were used in the experiment, and when it was the bilinguals’ native language. We interpret our results in terms of a model of bilingual sentence production.

Representation of colour concepts in bilingual cognition: The case of Japanese blues

Previous studies demonstrate that lexical coding of colour influences categorical perception of colour, such that participants are more likely to rate two colours to be more similar if they belong to the same linguistic category (Roberson et al., 2000, 2005). Recent work shows changes in Greek–English bilinguals' perception of within and cross-category stimulus pairs as a function of the availability of the relevant colour terms in semantic memory, and the amount of time spent in the L2-speaking country (Athanasopoulos, 2009). The present paper extends Athanasopoulos' (2009) investigation by looking at cognitive processing of colour in Japanese–English bilinguals. Like Greek, Japanese contrasts with English in that it has an additional monolexemic term for ‘light blue’(mizuiro). The aim of the paper is to examine to what degree linguistic and extralinguistic variables modulate Japanese–English bilinguals' sensitivity to the blue/light blue distinction. Results showed that those bilinguals who used English more frequently distinguished blue and light blue stimulus pairs less well than those who used Japanese more frequently. These results suggest that bilingual cognition may be dynamic and flexible, as the degree to which it resembles that of either monolingual norm is, in this case, fundamentally a matter of frequency of language use.

Action and object naming versus verb and noun retrieval in connected speech: Comparisons in late bilingual Greek–English anomic speakers

Background: Recently, verb–noun processing differences were reported in a group of late bilingual speakers with fluent, anomic aphasia in Greek (L1) as well as in English (L2) (Kambanaros & van Steenbrugge, 2006). The findings revealed that verb production was significantly more impaired than noun production in both languages during picture naming despite preserved comprehension of action and object names. Aims: The aim of this study is to investigate the total number (quantity) and the diversity (quality or different types) of verbs and nouns produced in conversational speech by the same group of bilingual anomic individuals with aphasia and compare the results to (i) those of the non‐brain‐injured control group and (ii) their action and object naming performances at the single word level, to determine if grammatical class impairments are also evident in spontaneous speech. Methods & Procedures: In order to examine the distribution and diversity of verbs and nouns in spontaneous speech, speech samples of 300 words were collected from the bilingual individuals with fluent aphasia and their controls in L1 and in L2 on two separate occasions, 1 week apart. In addition, two subtests from the Greek Object and Action Test (GOAT: Kambanaros, 2003), the object and action naming subtests, were presented on two separate occasions, 1 week apart, to both groups of bilingual participants in L1 and L2 (cf. Kambanaros & van Steenbrugge, 2006). Outcomes & Results: Late bilingual participants with anomia showed no difficulties retrieving verbs in spontaneous speech in L1 or L2 despite a significant verb deficit in both languages on action naming tasks. However the bilingual group had significant difficulties in relation to noun production in spontaneous speech in L1 and L2. Conclusions: Picture naming remains the standard of word retrieval ability in aphasia. However, object and action naming scores can underestimate and/or overestimate word retrieval performance for nouns and verbs in connected speech.

Trichodaganomania: The compulsive habit of biting one's own hair

A 17-year-old male presented with patches of hair loss on both forearms with comorbid depression and anxiety disorders. He had irresistible urges to bite his hair on easily approachable sites and endorsed biting his hair during periods of severe anxiety and boredom, resulting in noticeable patches of hair loss. There was no evidence of trichotillomanic behavior or any other skin pathology resulting in loss of hair at those sites. Microscopy of the bitten end of hairs showed smooth, sharply demarcated, blunted shafts. Trichodaganomania (biting one's own hair) should not be confused with trichotillomania, trichotemnomania, or trichoteiromania. A psychodermatologic evaluation is warranted in the evaluation of these cases.

Cognitive representation of colour in bilinguals: The case of Greek blues

A number of recent studies demonstrate that bilinguals with languages that differ in grammatical and lexical categories may shift their cognitive representation of those categories towards that of monolingual speakers of their second language. The current paper extended that investigation to the domain of colour in Greek–English bilinguals with different levels of bilingualism, and English monolinguals. Greek differentiates the blue region of colour space into a darker shade calledbleand a lighter shade calledghalazio. Results showed a semantic shift of category prototypes with level of bilingualism and acculturation, while the way bilinguals judged the perceptual similarity between within- and cross-category stimulus pairs depended strongly on the availability of the relevant colour terms in semantic memory, and the amount of time spent in the L2-speaking country. These results suggest that cognition is tightly linked to semantic memory for specific linguistic categories, and to cultural immersion in the L2-speaking country.

Action naming versus verb retrieval in connected speech: Evidence from late bilingual Greek–English fluent, anomic aphasic speakers

Action naming versus verb retrieval in connected speech: Evidence from late bilingual Greek–English fluent, anomic aphasic speakers

Crosslinguistic influence and language dominance in older bilingual children

The point of departure of this study is the well-known hypothesis according to which structures that involve the syntax–pragmatics interface and instantiate a surface overlap between two languages are more vulnerable to crosslinguistic influence than purely syntactic domains (e.g. Muller and Hulk, 2001). In exploring the validity of this hypothesis for later stages of bilingual acquisition, the study aims to establish whether crosslinguistic influence occu only in one direction, i.e. from English to Greek, which structural factors can account for the directionality of crosslinguistic effects, and whether language dominance plays a role in determining the occurrence and the strength of these effects in older bilingual children. Experimental data are presented from 32 English–Greek eight-year-old simultaneous bilinguals – 16 Greek-dominant living in Greece and 16 English-dominant living in the UK – and monolingual control groups. A number of syntax–pragmatics interface and narrow syntax structures were investigated and the results showed that both types of structures were found to be selectively vulnerable to crosslinguistic influence in the predicted direction, but only in the grammar of the English-dominant bilinguals.

Noun and verb processing in Greek–English bilingual individuals with anomic aphasia and the effect of instrumentality and verb–noun name relation

Noun and verb comprehension and production was investigated in two groups of late bilingual, Greek–English speakers: individuals with anomic aphasia and a control group of non-brain injured individuals matched for age and gender. There were no significant differences in verb or noun comprehension between the two groups in either language. However, verb and noun production during picture naming was significantly worse in the bilingual individuals with anomic aphasia in both languages, who also showed a specific verb impairment in Greek and English. The potential underlying level of breakdown of the specific verb impairment was further investigation with reference to two specific features of verbs: instrumentality and verb–noun relationship. Additional results revealed a facilitatory effect of Instrumentality in both languages. However, there was no effect of verb–noun name relation in Greek, and a negative effect of verb–noun name relation was observed in English. Lemma retrieval seemed to be intact in this group of bilingual individuals whose main problem seemed to arise during the retrieval of the phonological representation of the target word. This impairment was greater in English. The findings are discussed in terms of three current models of word production.

Clause structure and verb movement in a Greek–English speaking bilingual patient with Broca’s aphasia: Evidence from adverb placement

In this paper, we investigate the performance of a Greek–English bilingual patient with Broca’s aphasia and mild agrammatism on the placement of CP, MoodP, AspectP, and NegP-related adverbs, labeled specifier-type adverbs, and VP-related adverbs, labeled complement-type adverbs, by means of a constituent ordering task and a grammaticality judgment task. Based on the results derived by means of these two different tasks in both Greek and English, we argue that (i) the CP layer causes great difficulties to aphasic performance in both languages but it is not missing from aphasic grammar, whereas the VP layer remains intact in both languages; (ii) the MoodP, AspectP, and NegP-related adverbs cause more difficulties in English that in Greek. We attribute this to the independent differences between English and Greek that relate to properties of verbal morphology and syntactic head movement.

The translation of legal texts on the basis of Skopostheorie (in Greek)

The aim of the thesis is to examine the feasibility of translating legal texts
 for different purposes (skopoi), to establish linguistically the comparative
 degree of difficulty for the two combinations English–Greek and
 German–Greek and to propose a model for the teaching of specialized
 translation. The theoretical infrastructure for the first aspect is the Skopostheorie.
 This theory, introduced by the German scholars Reiss and
 Vermeer, propounds a functional approach to translating, where the translator
 detaches himself from the source text and prioritizes the skopos or
 purpose and the effect of the translation on the final recipient.
 
 Randomly selected professional translators rendered a particular
 German lease (civil law) and a particular English lease (common law) into
 Greek (civil law) for one specific skopos each. The translators did not
 know that the translations would be used for research purposes. The designated
 skopoi were selected on the basis of my experience as a translator.
 In the first skopos the translators were asked to render both the English
 and the German original for a layman with no legal knowledge; in the
 second skopos they had to translate for a comparative lawyer wishing to
 become acquainted with the formulation of leases in the legal source
 system, while in the third skopos the translated text was bound for a
 Greek court.
 
 The analyses of the way the lexicon, the syntax and the textlinguistic
 features of the source texts were translated for each skopos revealed that
 none of the source texts were translated adequately as a whole. However,
 indications were found within nearly every translation that a skopos-oriented
 rendering of legal texts is possible. For example the common law
 term landlord was rendered into Greek by the term ekmisqwt–z (lessor),
 which is the one used in Greek leases (functional equivalent), and not by
 the term idiokt–tjz (owner, landlord) thus depriving the comparative
 lawyer of the denotation of the source term. However, the translation of
 the term landlord as ekmisqwt–z was considered acceptable in the case of
 the layman recipient. Comparing the translation processes for both pairs,
 the higher degree of difficulty for the translation from English (common
 law) into Greek (civil law) could be proven experimentally, since for the
 transfer of meaning from one legal system into another the translator has
 to consider more linguistic and legal parameters than in the translation of
 the German lease (civil law) into Greek (civil law).
 
 Finally, a model for teaching specialized translation structured around
 Skopostheorie and the feasibility of translating legal texts for different
 skopoi was introduced. The manipulation of the skopos for a particular
 text allows the instructor to increase gradually the difficulty of the task by
 asking the students to translate in the early stages for skopoi which
 demand only a minimum of effort, for example to inform a potential client
 about the content of a text. Later the task would be to translate a text for
 someone interested in the structure of the source text, but who is ignorant
 of the language, while the third level would be to ask the student to
 produce a functionally equivalent text. That way the students gradually
 acquire the necessary skills for a skopos-oriented translation and become
 aware of the limits of language and the wider meaning of the term translation.