Associate Professor of Linguistics
Open University of Cyprus Phone: +35722411922 Address: Open University of Cyprus
Y. Kranidioti 33, Latsia, Nicosia, Cyprus
• Greek Cypriot education remains largely oriented towards promoting standard language ideologies... more • Greek Cypriot education remains largely oriented towards promoting standard language ideologies and only accepts Standard Greek as the language of teaching and learning. • Cypriot Greek, the pupils' home variety, is still seen as an obstacle to academic achievement by teachers and educational authorities. • Cypriot Greek needs to be integrated into policies and practices of teaching and learning both in Cyprus and in the UK's Greek Cypriot community. • This will: o hone pupils' awareness of different varieties; o foster the development of their critical literacy; o facilitate the acquisition of Standard Greek; o counter negative perceptions, stereotypes and feelings of inferiority associated with the use of Cypriot Greek; and, o aid in the maintenance and intergenerational transmission of Cypriot Greek as a heritage and community language in the UK. • Teachers and learning activities should promote and cultivate: o awareness and respect of the different varieties spoken in class, Cypriot Greek and Standard Greek; and, o awareness of vocabulary and grammar in the contexts of use of the two varieties and their social meanings. • This approach will ultimately change the way we view language and literacy learning. 2 Why and how to integrate non-standard linguistic varieties into education | Languages, Society and Policy
This paper examines two syntactic phenomena, focusing and clitic placement, which are structurall... more This paper examines two syntactic phenomena, focusing and clitic placement, which are structurally different in Standard and Cypriot Greek. As is well-known, syntactic movement of the focused constituent to the preverbal position is not part of the grammar of Cypriot Greek as syntactic focusing necessarily involves clefting in this variety. Clitic placement is also structurally different in the two varieties: Standard Greek displays proclisis with finite verb forms and enclisis with non-finite ones, while Cypriot Greek displays clitic-second effects. Assuming that speakers of Cy-priot Greek are bidialectal, acquiring Cypriot Greek naturalistically and potentially reaching near-native competence in Standard Greek, it is particularly interesting that as regards Standard Greek clitic placement they display native attainment, but they fail to do so as regards Standard Greek syntactic focus movement. Concomitantly, exceptional clitic placement in the immediately preverbal position (unexpected pro-clisis) occurs at a non-negligible rate in Cypriot Greek acrolectal or standard-like production; in stark contrast, focus movement does not occur in such production, with speakers invariably opting for clefting. This paper presents data from sociolin-guistic interviews and from a quantitative survey which attest to the differential acquisition of the two phenomena by bidialectal speakers and it proffers an account which suggests that differences in acquisition may be due to the type of interface in which the structural phenomenon is involved.
Le multilinguisme en contexte éducatif au XXIe siècle : perspectives critiques Cahiers internationaux de sociolinguistinque n°16 Sous la direction de Luk Van Mensel et Christine Hélot, 2019
Αντιφίλησις. Studies on Classical, Byzantine and Modern Greek Literature and Culture. In Honour of John-Theophanes A. Papademetriou. Stuttgart: Steiner., 2009
The Greek Cypriot speech community is diglossic; Cypriot Greek is the naturally acquired variety ... more The Greek Cypriot speech community is diglossic; Cypriot Greek is the naturally acquired variety and Standard Greek is the superposed standard. This paper investigates the role of language variation in education policies and concomitant literacy practices in Cyprus. Past language policies dictated strict adherence to the language curricula of Greece, with minimal reference to linguistic variation for pedagogical purposes, the sole exception being the short-lived curriculum of 2010, which adopted a critical approach and proposed capitalizing on variation as a tool for increasing students’ metalinguistic awareness. After describing the educational context in Cyprus in terms of language policy, the paper (a) investigates language variation in Greek Cypriot classrooms through ethnographic data; and (b) explores how nonstandard varieties can become a useful metalinguistic tool by presenting data from a pedagogical intervention.
This paper explores the syntactic and semantic similarities between Cypriot Turkish {-mIş} / {-(y... more This paper explores the syntactic and semantic similarities between Cypriot Turkish {-mIş} / {-(y)mIş} and its Cypriot Greek counterpart miʃimu. We show that the aspectual function(s) of the verbal suffix mIş are restricted in Cypriot Turkish and that both copular {-(y)mIş} and the verbal suffix {- mIş} can be treated as a discourse particle indexing a particular type of illocutionary force (dissociative). Cypriot Greek miʃimu, a clear case of borrowing, only displays the dissociative function; it is therefore tempting to argue that this dissociative marker may have been reborrowed into Cypriot Turkish as a free morpheme with a purely dissociative force -- thereby pointing to language (or, in this case, dialect) contact as a reciprocal relation.
ABSTRACT Cypriot and Standard Greek still stand in a diglossic relationship; however, recent work... more ABSTRACT Cypriot and Standard Greek still stand in a diglossic relationship; however, recent work on Cypriot Greek points to ongoing processes of levelling of local sub-varieties and the emergence of a pancypriot koiné . This paper explores patterns of structural mixing between Standard and Cypriot Greek in the Cypriot koiné . The data indicate that structural mixing is mostly achieved through morphological choices, while Cypriot phonology and syntax remain largely intact. The fact that morphology has this capacity of a ‘buffer’ between two presumably competing grammatical systems provides a strong parallel to interlanguage phenomena and a potential account of why the two systems are prevented from merging. Keywords: competing grammars; Cypriot Greek; diglossia; koiné; levelling; Standard Greek
• Greek Cypriot education remains largely oriented towards promoting standard language ideologies... more • Greek Cypriot education remains largely oriented towards promoting standard language ideologies and only accepts Standard Greek as the language of teaching and learning. • Cypriot Greek, the pupils' home variety, is still seen as an obstacle to academic achievement by teachers and educational authorities. • Cypriot Greek needs to be integrated into policies and practices of teaching and learning both in Cyprus and in the UK's Greek Cypriot community. • This will: o hone pupils' awareness of different varieties; o foster the development of their critical literacy; o facilitate the acquisition of Standard Greek; o counter negative perceptions, stereotypes and feelings of inferiority associated with the use of Cypriot Greek; and, o aid in the maintenance and intergenerational transmission of Cypriot Greek as a heritage and community language in the UK. • Teachers and learning activities should promote and cultivate: o awareness and respect of the different varieties spoken in class, Cypriot Greek and Standard Greek; and, o awareness of vocabulary and grammar in the contexts of use of the two varieties and their social meanings. • This approach will ultimately change the way we view language and literacy learning. 2 Why and how to integrate non-standard linguistic varieties into education | Languages, Society and Policy
This paper examines two syntactic phenomena, focusing and clitic placement, which are structurall... more This paper examines two syntactic phenomena, focusing and clitic placement, which are structurally different in Standard and Cypriot Greek. As is well-known, syntactic movement of the focused constituent to the preverbal position is not part of the grammar of Cypriot Greek as syntactic focusing necessarily involves clefting in this variety. Clitic placement is also structurally different in the two varieties: Standard Greek displays proclisis with finite verb forms and enclisis with non-finite ones, while Cypriot Greek displays clitic-second effects. Assuming that speakers of Cy-priot Greek are bidialectal, acquiring Cypriot Greek naturalistically and potentially reaching near-native competence in Standard Greek, it is particularly interesting that as regards Standard Greek clitic placement they display native attainment, but they fail to do so as regards Standard Greek syntactic focus movement. Concomitantly, exceptional clitic placement in the immediately preverbal position (unexpected pro-clisis) occurs at a non-negligible rate in Cypriot Greek acrolectal or standard-like production; in stark contrast, focus movement does not occur in such production, with speakers invariably opting for clefting. This paper presents data from sociolin-guistic interviews and from a quantitative survey which attest to the differential acquisition of the two phenomena by bidialectal speakers and it proffers an account which suggests that differences in acquisition may be due to the type of interface in which the structural phenomenon is involved.
Le multilinguisme en contexte éducatif au XXIe siècle : perspectives critiques Cahiers internationaux de sociolinguistinque n°16 Sous la direction de Luk Van Mensel et Christine Hélot, 2019
Αντιφίλησις. Studies on Classical, Byzantine and Modern Greek Literature and Culture. In Honour of John-Theophanes A. Papademetriou. Stuttgart: Steiner., 2009
The Greek Cypriot speech community is diglossic; Cypriot Greek is the naturally acquired variety ... more The Greek Cypriot speech community is diglossic; Cypriot Greek is the naturally acquired variety and Standard Greek is the superposed standard. This paper investigates the role of language variation in education policies and concomitant literacy practices in Cyprus. Past language policies dictated strict adherence to the language curricula of Greece, with minimal reference to linguistic variation for pedagogical purposes, the sole exception being the short-lived curriculum of 2010, which adopted a critical approach and proposed capitalizing on variation as a tool for increasing students’ metalinguistic awareness. After describing the educational context in Cyprus in terms of language policy, the paper (a) investigates language variation in Greek Cypriot classrooms through ethnographic data; and (b) explores how nonstandard varieties can become a useful metalinguistic tool by presenting data from a pedagogical intervention.
This paper explores the syntactic and semantic similarities between Cypriot Turkish {-mIş} / {-(y... more This paper explores the syntactic and semantic similarities between Cypriot Turkish {-mIş} / {-(y)mIş} and its Cypriot Greek counterpart miʃimu. We show that the aspectual function(s) of the verbal suffix mIş are restricted in Cypriot Turkish and that both copular {-(y)mIş} and the verbal suffix {- mIş} can be treated as a discourse particle indexing a particular type of illocutionary force (dissociative). Cypriot Greek miʃimu, a clear case of borrowing, only displays the dissociative function; it is therefore tempting to argue that this dissociative marker may have been reborrowed into Cypriot Turkish as a free morpheme with a purely dissociative force -- thereby pointing to language (or, in this case, dialect) contact as a reciprocal relation.
ABSTRACT Cypriot and Standard Greek still stand in a diglossic relationship; however, recent work... more ABSTRACT Cypriot and Standard Greek still stand in a diglossic relationship; however, recent work on Cypriot Greek points to ongoing processes of levelling of local sub-varieties and the emergence of a pancypriot koiné . This paper explores patterns of structural mixing between Standard and Cypriot Greek in the Cypriot koiné . The data indicate that structural mixing is mostly achieved through morphological choices, while Cypriot phonology and syntax remain largely intact. The fact that morphology has this capacity of a ‘buffer’ between two presumably competing grammatical systems provides a strong parallel to interlanguage phenomena and a potential account of why the two systems are prevented from merging. Keywords: competing grammars; Cypriot Greek; diglossia; koiné; levelling; Standard Greek
Nicosia is a divided European capital; the two major ethnic communities of the island, Greek and ... more Nicosia is a divided European capital; the two major ethnic communities of the island, Greek and Turkish Cypriots, are separated de facto following the war of 1974. The inner-city areas delimited by the UNcontrolled buffer zone were long abandoned but recently there have been attempts at gentrification. The landscape is linguistically and textually rich and diverse; walls, fences, doorways, even the walls of the 'border' are inscribed with an abundance of texts including political slogans, advertisements for rallies or local festivals, graffiti, posters, stencilled images etc. In this paper I focus on the visual and linguistic dialectic of texts that are generated 'top-down' and texts generated 'bottom-up'; the former display normativity and linguistic prescriptivism, as the dominant language is Standard Greek, the 'H' variety in the Greek Cypriot diglossic context. In the latter, the linguistic choice de rigueur is translanguaging, involving (i) aspects of the Cypriot Greek dialect, the 'L' variety that is still by-and-large banned from the public domain, and code-mixing between Standard and Cypriot Greek, (ii) the use of other languages, mostly English but also French, Turkish, Russian etc., (iii) ungrammatical structures or 'nonsensical' texts, (iv) subversion of orthographic conventions, etc. A micro-level linguistic analysis of individual texts and of particular types of translanguaging and linguistic and orthographic bricolage is proffered and the argument is put forward that the counternormativity of such production is predicated not only upon its content and form but crucially also upon its interdiscursivity and its engagement in an ongoing conflictual dialectic with 'top-down' prescriptive production.
This paper examines the semantic and pragmatic properties of the Standard Greek and Cypriot Greek... more This paper examines the semantic and pragmatic properties of the Standard Greek and Cypriot Greek particle taha ([taxa], 'supposedly' / 'allegedly') with the aim of accounting for the differences in its semantic and pragmatic properties in the two varieties from a relevance-theoretic perspective. Standard Greek taha is an evidential / hearsay particle; this function is shared by Cypriot Greek. Cypriot Greek taha displays an array of additional functions, as it can be a pragmatic marker of dissociation, albeit not from the propositional content but from associated implicatures, and as such it is not truth-functional. At the end of the continuum from truth-functional to non truth-functional taha lie cases where taha is merely used as a filler or as a hedging device. We propose a unitary pragmatic account of the whole range of the functions of taha in both varieties of Greek examined in this paper on the basis of the assumption that evidential / hearsay particles like taxa carry procedural meaning, marking the use of the proposition in their scope as interpretive / metarepresentational.
This entry provides an overview of the concept of diglossia in the sociolinguistic literature of ... more This entry provides an overview of the concept of diglossia in the sociolinguistic literature of the last six decades. It presents the trajectory from the original Fergusonian definition, which assumed a particular hierarchical relation between related varieties, to approaches which assume diglossic configurations in situations of bilingualism or plurilingualism as well as in standard-with-dialects constellations. The problematization of diglossia as a meaningful theoretical concept in the light of recent developments in sociolinguistics is discussed.
Survival of the 'oddest'? Levelling, shibboleths, reallocation and the emergence of intermediate varieties, 2019
This contribution examines some cases of arrested convergence to the standard variety in Cypriot ... more This contribution examines some cases of arrested convergence to the standard variety in Cypriot Greek, the 'L' variety in Cyprus' diglossic context; we explore some of the reasons why full convergence of the Cypriot Greek koine to Standard Greek does not take place and why certain dialect features which are marked and/or perceived as 'odd' or exceptional have found their way into the koine. The paper presents quantitative findings from rating surveys and elicitation tasks targeting phonological, syntactic and semantic phenomena: (1) the predominance of clefting, the Cypriot strategy for syntactic focusing, in lieu of focus movement, the Standard Greek strategy for syntactic focusing; (2) the semantic and pragmatic properties of innovative Past Perfect, which suggest that it is construed as a bona fide Cypriot Greek [+past] tense, despite morphological and phonological innovation; (3) the survival and spread of variants such as the palatal [ʝː] in lieu of the standard-like [ʎː], or the preservation of old ones, a typical case being the shibbolethal, basilectal [ç]. The data highlight the intricate interplay of structural and sociolinguistic factors, which attests to the complexity of the processes of koine formation.
Intermediate Language Varieties. Koinai and regional standards in Europe. , 2000
The papers in this volume address the interplay of factors underlying the formation of intermedia... more The papers in this volume address the interplay of factors underlying the formation of intermediate varieties in the 'dialect-standard' landscape of present-day Europe. Research is presented on varieties of several different languages (Norwegian, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek), on speech communities with different (geo)political and sociolinguistic histories, as well as on previously unexplored sociolinguistic situations. The contributions all share the twin characteristics of (a) robust scrutiny of structural variation and its links to both structural-systemic parameters and extralinguistic variables and (b) nuanced approaches to macro-and micro-level categories, with the requisite theoretical and method-ological fine-tuning. While focusing on different languages/language groups, the papers in this volume share the common foci of bringing together structural and sociolinguistic considerations and of the concomitant necessary revisiting of methodologies. The data and analyses presented yield a firmer and more nuanced understanding of the dynamic permutations of cross-dialectal and dialect-to-standard convergence and the formation of intermediate varieties in different yet comparable contexts. [Studies in Language Variation, 24] 2020. vi, 258 pp.
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Papers by Stavroula Tsiplakou
education policies and concomitant literacy practices in Cyprus. Past language policies dictated strict adherence to the language curricula of Greece, with minimal reference to linguistic variation for pedagogical
purposes, the sole exception being the short-lived curriculum of 2010, which adopted a critical approach and proposed capitalizing on variation as a tool for increasing students’ metalinguistic awareness. After describing the educational context in Cyprus in terms of language policy, the paper (a) investigates language variation in Greek Cypriot classrooms through ethnographic data; and (b) explores how nonstandard varieties can become a useful metalinguistic tool by presenting data from a pedagogical intervention.
education policies and concomitant literacy practices in Cyprus. Past language policies dictated strict adherence to the language curricula of Greece, with minimal reference to linguistic variation for pedagogical
purposes, the sole exception being the short-lived curriculum of 2010, which adopted a critical approach and proposed capitalizing on variation as a tool for increasing students’ metalinguistic awareness. After describing the educational context in Cyprus in terms of language policy, the paper (a) investigates language variation in Greek Cypriot classrooms through ethnographic data; and (b) explores how nonstandard varieties can become a useful metalinguistic tool by presenting data from a pedagogical intervention.