Research projects and language documentation
Acquisition of German as a Second Language – the Age Factor
Deutsch als Zweitsprache – Altersfaktor [DaZ-AF]
Two native speakers of Russian, aged 8;7 and 14;2 years at the beginning of data collection, were audiotaped in interaction with a native speaker of German for 60 min. once a week during 18 months from the beginning of their untutored development of German. The project aimed at examining the role played by the age factor (pre-puberty and puberty) in a “critical period” of second language acquisition. The project was initially supported by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, NL, and subsequently by the German Science Foundation [DFG] in Bonn.
In collaboration with Christine Dimroth (christine.dimroth[at]uni-muenster.de)
Data: https://archive.mpi.nl, https://hdl.handle.net/1839/00-0000-0000-0000-6A6F-E
Adaptation of the Bates-MacArthur CDI “Words and Sentences” to Greek
The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDIs) are parent-report instruments capturing information about children's developing abilities in early language, including vocabulary comprehension, production, gestures, and grammar. A pilot study of the adaptation of the toddler form of the BM-CDI Words and Sentences designed for use with 16- to 30-month-old children was done in 2010 in collaboration with Prof. Demetra Katis, PhD, at the University of Athens. The adaptation is planned to be continued by a group of researchers at the University of Athens, the University of West Attica and the University of Crete.
https://mb-cdi.stanford.edu/adaptations.html
Acquisition of Greek as a first language
The data of the “Greek Stephany Corpus” were collected between 1971 and 1974 and consist of about 90 hrs. of audiotaped dialogues of four monolingual Greek children growing up in Athens, Greece, and their mothers or grandmothers and the investigator taking place in natural speech situations in the children’s homes and or kindergarten. Observation periods and ages: 1;8–1;11, 2;3–2;5, 2;9–2;11. Data: 63 WAV files. Transcription of the data in CHAT format in course of revision and linkage to the corresponding WAV files. Automatic lexicon-based morphological coding of the transcripts will be possible with the help of a coded Greek lexicon in course of revision.
https://corpus1.mpi.nl/media-archive/mirrored_corpora/childes/data-cmdi/
https://childes.talkbank.org/access/Other/Greek/Stephany.html
Acquisition of narrative competence by Greek and German monolingual children
Data: 84 Greek frog stories (Frog, where are you?, picture story by Mercer Mayer, 1969) collected in Athens (children: 4;0, 5;0, 6;0, 7;0, 8;0, 9;0 years; adult control group); 29 German frog stories (children: 4;0, 5;0, 6;0, 7;0, 8;0; 1 adult) collected in Cologne, Germany. Transcription in CHAT (CHILDES).
Acquisition of Greek as a Second Language
Data: Audio files of more than 50 speakers of Greek L2 from about 20 different L1 backgrounds in 30-min. interviews with native speakers of Greek; collected by postgraduate students, Department of Linguistics, School of Philosophy, University of Athens, from 2003 to 2007; transcription in CHAT (CHILDES); morphologically coded lexicon (to be revised).
Acquisition of French as a native, second and foreign language
Data: The Cat Story, a 6-picture story (designed by Prof. Dr. Maya Hickmann, University of Paris-Sorbonne & MPI, Nijmegen), narrated in written form by three groups of 40 children each acquiring French as a native language in Switzerland (Lausanne) (9;0–10;0 years), a second language in West-Africa (Kara, Togo) (9;0–10;0 years), or a foreign language in Germany (Cologne, Düren) (12;0–15;0 years; language contact 4–5 years) and by a control group of 10 adult native speakers (Lausanne). A preliminary analysis of the acquisition of French tense-aspect forms in the past tense (passé simple/imparfait) was undertaken in collaboration with Marianne Kilani-Schoch, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland, in 2013.
