The effects of bilingualism on verbal and non verbal cognition: The micro- and macro-structure of narratives in the weak and the dominant language of the bilingual child Maria Andreou A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psycholinguistics Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, School of English Aristotle University of Thessaloniki September 2015 This research has been co-financed by the European Union (European Social Fund – ESF) and Greek national funds through the Operational Program "Education and Lifelong Learning" of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) - Research Funding Program: Thales. Investing in knowledge society through the European Social Fund. ARISTOTLE UNIVERSITY OF THESSALONIKI DEPARTMENT OF THEORETICAL & APPLIED LINGUISTICS SCHOOL OF ENGLISH “The effects of bilingualism on verbal and non verbal cognition: The micro- and macro-structure of narratives in the weak and the dominant language of the bilingual child” Ph.D. Candidate Maria Andreou Supervising Committee Professor Ianthi Maria Tsimpli, School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Assistant Professor. Eleni Agathopoulou, School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Assistant Professor Elvira Masoura, Department of Psychology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Thessaloniki, September 2015 i Acknowledgments This dissertation is part of the project Thales “Bilingual Acquisition & Bilingual Education: The Development of Linguistic and Cognitive Abilities in Different Types of Bilingualism” and is based on collection of data from bilingual children from Thessaloniki, Athens, Germany, England and Albania. During the period of collecting and analyzing the data and conducting the research for this project a number of people have been involved in various ways and to various degrees. First and foremost I am grateful to my supervisor Professor Ianthi Maria Tsimpli who entrusted to me the topic of the dissertation, inspired, supported and guided me through this study. She offered bountifully from her knowledge, acumen and many important suggestions which undoubtedly made this thesis much better. A deep thanks of gratitude is due to her for introducing me to this area of study and offering me the opportunity of a unique experience during the last four years. I would also like to express my gratitude to the other two members of my Advising Committee, Professor Eleni Agathopoulou for her valuable remarks and suggestions and Professor Elvira Masoura for her comments on various points of methodology in the study of working memory and executive control. I am also indebted to a number of people of the Thales programme for their readiness to send me bibliographical material and for their invaluable comments and suggestions to my work: Prof. Christianne Bongartz also for offering me the opportunity to participate in the research project “Cognition, Literacy and Bilingualism in Greek-German Speaking Children (CoLiBi)” as part of the collaboration between Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the University of Cologne; Prof. Despina Papadopoulou. I would also like to thank Prof. Theodoros Marinis for his stimulating comments and for the unique opportunity to collaborate with him during my three-month internship at the University of Reading. I would like to thank a number of teachers who introduce me to the field of linguistics and inspired my interest in this field: Prof. Georgios Giannakis for his support, encouragement and guidance during the last years, Prof. Maria Mastropavlou for her help and support and Prof. Maria Baltazani, my supervisor during my graduate work. Special thanks go to friends and colleagues from the Language Development Laboratory of Aristotle University whose help and support proved valuable ii throughout my research: Maria Katsiperi, Eleni Fleva, Georgia Fotiadou, Maria Kaltsa, Natasa Chionidou, Eleni Baldimtsi, Evelyn Egger, Maria Papakonstantinou and Leonarda Prela. I would like to thank Ifigenia Dosi and Eva Knopp for long discussions on theoretical and practical issues and Eleni Peristeri for helping me with the statistical analysis and with her comments on my results. My sincere thanks also are due to Tasos Paschalis for his help with technical issues and for cheering us up with his humor and insightful comments. I am also indebted to the students, parents and teachers who participated in this project and made this study possible. I would like to gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the European Union (European Social Fund – ESF) and Greek national funds through the Operational Program “Education and Lifelong Learning Thales”. Last but not least, I would like to thank my family, Orestis for always being there and most of all I would like to thank my parents for always supporting and encouraging me. This thesis is affectionately dedicated to them. iii Part of this work has been published in the following journals/series: Tsimpli I. M., M. Andreou, M. Kaltsa & E. Kapia (2015). Albanian-Greek bilingual children in Albania and Greece: the effects on mother tongue literacy/education on cognitive abilities, Albanohellenica (6), 1-7. Andreou, M., E. Knopp, C. Bongartz, & I. M. Tsimpli (2015). Character Reference in Greek-German Bilingual Children’s Narratives. In L. Roberts, K. McManus, N. Vanek, & D. Trenkic (eds.), EUROSLA Yearbook 15, 1-40. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Tsimpli, I. M., M. Andreou, E. Agathopoulou & E. Masoura (2014). Narrative production, bilingualism and working memory capacity: A study of Greek-German bilingual children. Selected Papers of the 11th International Conference on Greek Linguistics, G. Kotzoglou et al. (eds.). Rhodes: University of the Aegean, 1730- 1742. Part of this work has been presented in the following conferences: Andreou M. & E. Egger, 2015. Measuring language proficiency in bilingual children: Data from a Narrative Retell Task. Workshop on Bilingual Acquisition and Bilingual Education: Linguistic and Cognitive Effects, Thessaloniki, 23- 24/04/2015. Tsimpli I. M., M. Andreou, M. Kaltsa & E. Kapia, 2015. Albanian-Greek bilingual children in Albania and Greece: the effects on mother tongue literacy/education on cognitive abilities. 2nd International Conference of Greek-Albanian/Albanian- Greek Studies, Tirana, 27-28/03/2015. Bongartz C., I. M. Tsimpli, M. Andreou, E. Knopp & M. Kaltsa, 2014. The role of accessibility in bilingual referential cohesion. XLVIII Congresso Internazionale Di Studi Societά Di Linguistica Italiana, Udine, 25-27/09/2014 Andreou M., C. Bongartz & E. Knopp, 2014. Salience in oral and written narratives of young Greek-German-English bilinguals. AILA World Congress, Brisbane 10- 15/8/2014. Andreou M. & I. M. Tsimpli, 2014. Character Reference: A study of Greek-German and Greek-English bilingual children. International Conference, Olinco, Olomouc 5-7/06/2014. Andreou M., 2014. Η κατάκτηση της ονοματικής συμφωνίας στον γραπτό και τον προφορικό λόγο από δίγλωσσα παιδιά (The acquisition of nominal agreement in written and oral speech by bilingual children). 35th Annual Meeting of the Department of Linguistics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 8-10/05/2014. Andreou M. & I. M. Tsimpli, 2014. Language dominance in child bilingualism: Effects οn narrative production and syntactic complexity. Workshop Experimental Methods in Language Acquisition Research, Utrecht, 14-16/04/2014. Andreou M., E. Knopp, C. Bongartz & I. M. Tsimpli, 2013. Syntactic complexity and discourse reference in Greek-German bilingual children’s narratives. 23rd Conference of the European Second Language Association (EUROSLA), Amsterdam 28-31/08/2013. Tsimpli I. M., M. Andreou, E. Agathopoulou & E. Masoura, 2013. Narrative production, bilingualism and working memory capacity: A study of Greek-German bilingual children. 11th International Conference on Greek Linguistics, Rhodes, 26- 29 September 2013. iv Contents Acknowledgments.......................................................................................................... ii ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................... xvii Abbreviations .............................................................................................................. xix CHAPTER 1 ................................................................................................................ 21 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................... 21 1.1 Thesis objectives .................................................................................................... 21 1.2 Thesis overview ..................................................................................................... 26 CHAPTER 2 ................................................................................................................ 28 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND ............................................................................. 28 2.1 Some background information on child bilingualism ............................................ 28 2.2 External factors ...................................................................................................... 30 2.2.1 Biliteracy ............................................................................................................. 30 2.2.2 Educational setting .............................................................................................. 34 2.3 Different