Meeting 20-Mar-2019: Elena Theodorou (CUT)

Written by CAT in News on Wed 20 March 2019. Tags: Meetings,

Important Update

Due to unexpected reasons, this week’s CAT lab meeting will NOT take place at the CAT lab, but on the first floor of the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences building (CUT)* (Vragadinou street 15) in Lemesos at 6:30pm. You can find the abstract below.


Join us on Wednesday, March 20th, at 6:30pm in room E004 on the first floor of the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences building (CUT)* (Vragadinou street 15) in Lemesos for a presentation by Elena Theodorou (Cyprus University of Technology) on Language disfluencies and speech rate in children with DLD. You can also attend this talk remotely at: meet.jit.si/CATLAB

Abstract

Fluency as well as speech rate are associated with the ability of producing speech quickly and easily. Literature strongly states that language production, fluency and rate of speech are highly interrelated processes. The term linguistic dysfluencies determines the whole set of pauses and self-repairs found in oral speech. In fact, they are part of normal production and serve the function of self-correction. As for children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), linguistic dysfluencies differ from those produced by Typically Language Developing (TLD) children.
This study examines the types and frequency of dysfluencies, as well as speech rate that appear in narrations of Cypriot-Greek children with DLD and typical language development.
Our findings suggest that preschool children with DLD use the same types and amount of disfluencies as TLD children do. Significant differences were yielded when school aged children with LI were compared with their TLD peers. No difference observed between preschool children might be related to the language acquisition process that happens rapidly at this age. Significant differences were detected when children with DLD were compared with their TLD peers in terms of speech rate.
Concluding, this study represents the very first study examining the linguistic dysfluencies and speech rate articulated by Greek speaking children (in this case Cypriot-Greek), and it could be characterized as exploratory.


Upcoming CAT meetings- Spring Semester 2019

  • Mar 27- Vasiliki Erotokritou, TBA
  • Apr 3- TBA
  • Apr 10- Demetris Karayiannis, TBA
  • Apr 17- Kleanthes K. Grohmann, `Knowledge of Language: Innateness, Modularity, and the Mind/Brain’

Meeting 06-Mar-2019: Natalia Pavlou (UCY)

Written by CAT in News on Wed 06 March 2019. Tags: Meetings,

Join us this Wednesday, March 6th, at 6:30pm at the CAT lab (E004). I will present my work on Cross-clausal subject-verb agreement in Greek. A short abstract can be found below.

Abstract

In this talk, I will examine cross-clausal subject-verb agreement in Greek, where the subject in the embedded clause agrees with both the embedded and the matrix verb. I argue that the subject is truly structurally in the embedded clause given evidence from temporal adverbials and on the basis of previous related work (Potsdam and Polinsky 2008, among others). The discussion will unfold to examine how cross-clausal agreement appears in different types of structures and to explain the phenomenon in terms of both a non-local and local theory of agreement.


Upcoming CAT meetings- Spring Semester 2019

  • Mar 13- Svetlana Karpava, `The effect of bilingualism on the development of literacy skills:Evidence from Cyprus’
  • Mar 20- Elena Theodorou, TBA
  • Mar 27- Vasiliki Erotokritou, TBA
  • Apr 3- TBA
  • Apr 10- Demetris Karayiannis, TBA
  • Apr 17- Kleanthes K. Grohmann, `Knowledge of Language: Innateness, Modularity, and the Mind/Brain’

Meeting 27-Feb-2019: Constantina Fotiou (University of Cyprus)

Written by CAT in News on Wed 27 February 2019. Tags: Meetings,

Join us this Wednesday, February 27th, at 6:30pm at the CAT lab (E004) for Constantina’s Fotiou (University of Cyprus) presentation on “An analysis of Cypriot Greek – English codeswitching practices” . If you want to attend remotely via the web conferencing link (here), please let me know by 4:30pm, February 27th. The abstract of Constantina’s talk can be found below.

Abstract

The aim of this talk is to examine Cypriot Greek – English codeswitching practices drawing from a dataset of naturally-occurring conversations among Greek Cypriots. As with all (linguistic) phenomena, codeswitching is better understood if studied from a variety of perspectives and at different levels of analysis. In this talk emphasis will be placed on the linguistic and discourse/conversational levels of analysis. It will be shown that in this context codeswitching mainly takes the form of English insertions in an otherwise Cypriot Greek grammatical structure. Nouns and noun phrases are the most frequently employed insertions followed by bilingual compound verbs (BCVs). The latter consist of a Cypriot Greek light verb bearing all grammatical inflections and, more often than not, an English non-finite verb (e.g., κάμνω analyse). BCVs offer a way to insert English verbs in a Cypriot Greek frame without morphological integration. Regarding the conversational/discourse level of analysis, it will be demonstrated that codeswitching is again of the insertional type in the sense that it does not challenge the predominance of Cypriot Greek in the course of an interaction. It can have a variety of discourse functions especially when it takes the form of constructed dialogue and reiteration. At the same time, it can take the form of participant-related codeswitching which can index specific attributes of the speaker. The talk will end with a short discussion on the broader role that English plays in Cyprus today and highlight the need for future studies examining the wider sociolinguistic functions of codeswitching in this community.


Upcoming CAT meetings- Spring Semester 2019

Mar 6- TBA
Mar 13- Svetlana Karpava, TBA
Mar 20- Elena Theodorou, TBA
Mar 27- TBA
Apr 3- Eleni Papadopoulou, TBA
Apr 10- Demetris Karayiannis, TBA
Apr 17- Kleanthes K. Grohmann, TBA


Meeting 20-Feb-2019: Evelina Leivada (University of Tromsø)

Written by CAT in News on Wed 20 February 2019. Tags: Meetings,

Dear CAT members and friends,

Join us this Wednesday, February 20th, at 6:30pm at the CAT lab (E004) for Evelina’s Leivada (University of Tromsø) presentation on “Linguistic primitives: Terminological fluidity and commensurability considerations” (Web conferencing link, join here). The abstract can be found below. 

Abstract:

The aim of this talk is twofold. First, I will identify and analyze 10 cases of terminological fluidity, polysemy and/or misuse in linguistic research. Terms like ‘feature’, ‘linguistic genotype’, ‘parameter’, ‘language universal’, and ‘Universal Grammar’ are pervasive in linguistic research. Through discussing issues related to their (mis)use, I will show how the implicit or explicit assumptions behind their postulation carry important implications in relation to the (i) coherence of the field and (ii) position linguistics currently has within the broader scheme of things in cognitive science. Through (ii), I will connect the two aims of this talk and make the transition from linguistics-internal terminological issues to linguistics-external, interdisciplinary considerations that pertain to commensurability and granularity. More specifically, I will focus on the syntactic domain within a Minimalist framework and discuss whether the primitives on which its theories are built are primitives that are sui generis sustainable also from a biological point of view.  

Best regards,
Natalia


Upcoming CAT meetings- Spring Semester 2019

Feb 27- Constantina Fotiou, TBA
Mar 6- TBA
Mar 13- Svetlana Karpava, TBA
Mar 20- Elena Theodorou, TBA
Mar 27- TBA
Apr 3- Eleni Papadopoulou, TBA
Apr 10- Demetris Karayiannis, TBA
Apr 17- Kleanthes K. Grohmann, TBA


Meeting 23-Jan-19: Research Agenda

Written by CAT in News on Wed 23 January 2019. Tags: Meetings,

Dear all,

We are having a meeting this Wednesday, January 23, 6:30-8pm at the CAT lab (E004) to talk about our research agenda for the semester. Maria, Vasiliki and I will be leading the discussion on some ideas.

If anyone wants to sign up for a presentation, the available dates can be found below.

All are welcome!

Best,
Natalia


Upcoming CAT meetings- Spring Semester 2019

Jan 30- Maria Tenizi, TBA
Feb 6- TBA
Feb 13- TBA
Feb 20- TBA
Feb 27- Constantina Fotiou, TBA
Mar 6- TBA
Mar 13- Svetlana Karpava, TBA
Mar 20- Elena Theodorou, TBA
Mar 27- TBA
Apr 3- Eleni Papadopoulou, TBA
Apr 10- Demetris Karayiannis, TBA
Apr 17- Kleanthes K. Grohmann, TBA



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