Investigating the production of Greek compounds by bidialectal and bilingual children

• Published in: Journal of Cognitive Science Vol. 21; no. 4; pp. 619 - 647
• Main Authors: Maria Tenizi, Georgios P. Georgiou
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Korean
• Published: 서울대학교 인지과학연구소 31.12.2020
• Subjects: bidialectals; bilinguals; compounds; Cypriot Greek; English
• ISSN: 1598-2327

Compound production by bidialectal and bilingual children has received scarce attention in terms of research since most of the studies in the literature focus on monolingual populations. Such investigations can offer an understanding of morphological acquisition in bidialectal and bilingual speakers. Also, it has been proposed that formal schooling enhances metalinguistic awareness and contributes to better control of the native language. The present study aims to investigate the Greek noun (noun + noun) and verbal (verb + verb) compound production patterns of Cypriot Greek - Standard Modern Greek bidialectal children and bidialectal plus bilingual children (English) (henceforth bilingual), and the effect of formal education on these productions. To this purpose, 35 preschool and first-grade bidialectal and bilingual children who permanently live in Cyprus participated in an experimental study in which they were instructed to produce Greek compound words after watching pictures and clips in a controlled environment. The results showed that bidialectal preschoolers outperformed bilingual preschoolers in the formation of correct compounds and they had relatively fewer errors than bilinguals, while there was a prevalent interference of the local dialect in their productions. Also, first-grade bidialectals demonstrated better performance than preschool bidialectals in the formation of correct compounds and had fewer errors in compound formation, but bilingual first-graders had worse overall performance than bilingual preschoolers. It is assumed that these differences are affected by the children’s linguistic repertoire and their attunement to the speech input of their environment. The study offers useful insights into how bidialectal and bilingual children construct compounds in an underresearched linguistic context and demonstrates the effect of sociolinguistic factors on compound production.