Stathis Selimis

University of Peloponnese | UOP · Department of Speech and Language Therapy

In interlanguage pragmatics, the request development of young learners has been rather underresearched, often without being compared with baseline (L1) data. The present study explores the request behavior of two intermediate proficiency groups of primary school children (8- and 11-year-olds, respectively) who learn Greek in an immersion setting. A...

The study focuses on the frequency and distribution of supportive moves (SMs) produced by L2 Greek child learners to frame their requests as an index of young learners’ ability to take into account sociocultural parameters of the communicative situation (cost of the requested action, speaker–addressee relationship). It draws on a corpus of data eli...

Language is widely assumed to play a role in memory by offering an additional medium of encoding visual stimuli. Given that natural languages differ, it is possible that cross-linguistic differences impact memory processes. Here we investigate the role of language (specifically, motion verbs) on memory for motion events in speakers of English, a la...

This study experimentally investigates whether Greek children are familiar with what is called learned/formal register in Modern Greek (e.g. the difference between the lexemes ostó ‘bone(LEARNED)’ and kókalo ‘bone(NORM)’) immediately before starting secondary school. As a plethora of formal structures derives from previous historical stages of the...

Prior research has demonstrated a linguistic asymmetry between the sources and goals of motion events, with goals being mentioned more frequently compared to sources in motion descriptions by both children and adults. Here we explore the potency and features of this asymmetry comparing linguistic production data from children and adults who speak t...

Motion verbs have been a popular topic of investigation in linguistics; they encode a fundamental domain of experience, they are frequently used in different types of texts and contexts, and are extensively used non-literally (e.g., time goes by). Ancient Greek, in particular, has been studied in regard to literal uses of motion verbs (e.g., concer...

Metaphor comprehension is investigated experimentally in Greek-speaking children, with the aim of tracing its development and possible determinants. Espousing the conceptual metaphor theory, which conceives metaphors as correspondences between concrete concepts (source domains) and more abstract ones (target domains), we studied conventional metaph...

Theoretical claims about typologically constrained differences in how speakers habitually describe physical motion are tested through three cross-linguistic developmental studies. Three types of data are analyzed in Greek and English, languages here characterized respectively as Verb- and Satellite-framed in the coding of motion: spontaneous conver...

It is well known that languages differ in how they encode motion. Languages such as English use verbs that communicate the manner of motion (e.g., climb, float), while languages such as Greek often encode the path of motion in verbs (e.g., advance, exit). In two studies with English- and Greek-speaking adults and five year olds, we ask how such lex...

It is well known that languages differ in how they encode motion. Languages such as English use verbs that communicate the manner of motion (e.g., slide, skip), while languages such as Greek regularly encode motion paths in verbs (e.g., enter, ascend). Here we ask how such cross-linguistic encoding patterns interface with event cognition by compari...

This paper explores figurative uses of motion verbs in early child-adult interaction in Greek versus English. Metaphors but also additional non-literal uses are noted even before age 2. However, their development partially differs cross-linguistically, a fact attributed to differences in input frequency and other conventional pressures in each lang...

Languages encode motion in strikingly different ways. Languages such as English communicate the manner of motion through verbs (e.g., roll , pop ), while languages such as Greek often lexicalize the path of motion in verbs (e.g., ascend , pass ). In a set of studies with English- and Greek-speaking adults and 5-year-olds, we ask how such lexical co...

Linguistic representations of motion are investigated, in order to contribute to the question of how language effects conceptualization at the moment of speaking. Both literal expressions of physical motion as well as their non-literal extensions to encode more abstract phenomena, such as temporal changes, are analyzed. In a developmental and cross...

The development of motion metaphors is traced in narratives by 194 Greek children. They appear even at 3 years, while they are enriched until 10: they are used more frequently, code more target concepts and are based upon a greater range of motion verbs.

Languages code motion event components in strikingly distinct ways. S(atellite-framed) languages code Path in satellites and Manner in the verb (e.g. English walk in/out), whereas V(erb-framed) languages code Path in the verb and Manner in optional elements (e.g. Spanish entrar/salir caminando). These typological differences are claimed to (partial...

Differences in the linguistic coding of motion are sought in naturalistic speech data from child Greek and English during the age span of 1;8 to 4;6 years. Previous research has indicated cross-linguistic differences in the coding of motion, as children seem to follow the typological pattern of their mother tongue, preferring verbs which lexicalize...

Η έρευνα αυτή συμβάλλει στη συζήτηση περί επιδράσεων της γλωσσικής δομής στους συνήθεις τρόπους περιγραφής -ίσως και σύλληψης- του κόσμου. Συγκρίνει τις αναφορές σε γεγονότα φυσικής και αφηρημένης κίνησης σε συνομιλίες ενηλίκων και παιδιών 1;8-4;6 ετών στα αγγλικά και τα ελληνικά -γλώσσες που λεξικοποιούν τον Τρόπο και την Πορεία της κίνησης αντίστ...

An investigation of motion event metaphors in Modern Greek (MG) written corpora is undertaken from two points of view. Given, for one, the general claim of cognitive semantics that metaphorical events are conceptualized on the basis of physical events, it is asked whether this is also observed in MG and in what particular ways. The data supports th...

A review of the computational tools for the Balkanet multilingual database, regarding the Greek language, are presented.

A lemmatized word-frequency counter for Modern Greek is presented that support the development of the Balkanet multilingual database.

This report describes the design and architecture of the tools that have been developed for the construction of each monolingual WordNet of the participating Balkan languages.