Theodora Alexopoulou

Broad Subjects and Clitic Left Dislocation

In this paper we have further defended the claim, set out in Doron and Heycock (1999), that a language in which nominative case can be checked by more than one element can allow merging of “Broad Subjects“ in [Spec,TP]. In this earlier work, we argued that such languages included Modern Hebrew and Modern Standard Arabic. Here we have further argued that Broad Subjects are found also in Levantine Arabic. The recognition of this possibility then allows an analysis of a residue of left-peripheral XPs associated with a clitic as instances of Clitic Left Dislocation, with properties near-identical to this construction as identified in Italian and Greek. While a number of questions about the nature of the configurations involved remain to be answered, we consider that some progress at least has been made in reducing the apparent proliferation of language-specific properties of elements occupying the left periphery.

L1 Influence on the Acquisition Order of English Grammatical Morphemes: A Learner Corpus Study

We revisit morpheme studies to evaluate the long-standing claim for a universal order of acquisition. We investigate the L2 acquisition order of six English grammatical morphemes by learners from seven L1 groups across five proficiency levels. Data are drawn from approximately 10,000 written exam scripts from the Cambridge Learner Corpus. The study establishes clear L1 influence on the absolute accuracy of morphemes and their acquisition order, therefore challenging the widely held view that there is a universal order of acquisition of L2 morphemes. Moreover, we find that L1 influence is morpheme specific, with morphemes encoding language-specific concepts most vulnerable to L1 influence.

Focus in Greek wh-questions

We present an analysis of multiple focus sentences in Greek. On an empirical level, we show that the current generalisation in the Greek literature that multiple focus is unavailable in Greek is too strong as it stands. What is unavailable is multiple maximal foci in sentences where one focused item has moved to the left periphery. We view the unavailability of multiple foci in such sentences as an interface mismatch between interpretation and phonology. Roughly, what is unavailable is not multiple focus but multiple sentence

Topic-Strategies and the Internal Structure of Nominal Arguments in Greek and Italian

In this article, we argue that a set of unexpected contrasts in the interpretation of clitic-left-dislocated indefinites in Greek and Italian derive from structural variation in the nominal syntax of the two languages. Greek resists nonreferential indefinites in clitic left-dislocation, resorting to the topicalization of an often bare noun for nonreferential topics. By contrast, clitic left-dislocation is employed in Italian for topics regardless of their definite/indefinite interpretation. We argue that this contrast is directly linked to the wide availability of bare nouns in Greek, which stems from a structural difference in the nominal syntax of the two languages. In particular, we hypothesize that Greek nominal arguments lack a D layer. Rather, they are Number Phrases. We situate this analysis in the context of Chierchia’s (1998) typology of nominals. We argue that, on a par with Italian nouns, Greek nouns are [−arg, +pred]. However, they do not employ a syntactic head (D) for type-shifting to e. Rather, they resort to covert type-shifting, a hypothesis that is necessary to account for the distribution and interpretations of bare nouns in Greek, vis-à-vis other [−arg, +pred] languages like Italian and French.

Longitudinal L2 Development of the English Article in Individual Learners.

We investigate the accuracy development of the English article by learners of English as a second language. The study focuses on individual learners, tracking their learning trajectories through their writings in the EF-Cambridge Open Language Database (EFCAMDAT), an open access learner corpus. We draw from 17,859 writings by 1,280 learners and ask whether article accuracy in individual learners fluctuates randomly or whether learners can be clustered according to their developmental trajectories. In particular, we apply kmeans clustering to automatically cluster in a bottom up fashion learners with similar learning curves. We follow learners for a period covering one CEFR level. Given the relatively short learning window, the majority of learners follow a horizontal line. Nevertheless, we also identify groups of learners showing a power-function and U-shaped curve. Crucially, these groups are ‘hidden’ when the aggregate of learners is considered, a finding highlighting the importance of individual level analysis.