Proposition for teaching metaphors and idioms of Modern Greek as a foreign language

The goal of this paper is to suggest potential learning material for metaphors and idioms  of Modern Greek as a foreign language based on the cognitive linguistic approach.  Teaching and learning metaphors and idioms is deemed to be quite difficult for teachers  and learners of every language and that’s why the adoption of the cognitive framework  is believed to facilitate their acquisition, since their learning according to cognitive linguistics, is not based on traditional methods such as alphabetical order or memorization  but on the discovery of deeper semantic relations on which a major part of metaphors  and metonyms of the Greek language relies on

Vocabulary interaction among the three languages of trilingual children

The aim of the present study was to examine vocabulary interaction and more specifically cross-linguistic influence among the three languages of trilingual schoolchildren. The three languages of our sample were: Greek (either as an L1 or L2) Albanian (either as an L1 or L2) and English (L3). Two types of cross-linguistic influence, i.e., interactional strategies and transfer lapses, were detected while they narrated two different stories. Our results showed that the presence of three languages created complex patterns in the activation of languages in speech production among the trilinguals of our sample

Semantic processing in children with Down Syndrome

This research focuses on language processing, and more specifically on semantic processing, in children with Down Syndrome (DS). It has repeatedly been documented that children with DS display severe deficits in all language domains, semantics among others, and especially in their expressive language. Therefore, our purpose was to detect possible differences between receptive and expressive language in the semantic domain in DS and to compare semantic processing, both receptive and expressive, of children with DS with that of children with typical development. For this purpose we examined two groups of children, a group of children with Down Syndrome (DS) and a group of children with typical development (TD), aged 4-7.11 years old. Our findings proved that children with DS scored lower than typically developing children in all semantic tasks, whether receptive or expressive and that their performance was lower in the expressive language tasks than the receptive ones

Coastal Archaeology and Climate Change in the Middle East and North Africa: Contextualizing Global Projections

Recent global projections of climate change highlight alarming rates of flooding and erosion on the coastlines of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Though there are indisputable links between climate change and the deterioration of maritime cultural heritage (particularly coastal archaeology), deterioration is often the result of multiple compounding factors, central among which are anthropogenic landscape alterations. In this article the authors attempt to disentangle these factors at a small scale, using the Gaza Strip, Libya, and Oman as case studies. They examine the impact of accelerating coastal erosion, flooding, and increasing frequency of tropical cyclones to question predominant discussions on the impact of climate change on heritage. They emphasize methods and practices for the identification of sites that can expand and refine climate change research (often reliant on data from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries) through the long-term perspective archaeology is uniquely placed to offer

Traversing space: landscape and identity in Bronze Age Cyprus

The Cypriot Bronze Age (c.2300-1075 BCE) is a widely researched chronological period. However, with long-term material elaboration receiving most attention, detailed studies have revealed a remarkable, yet insufficiently integrated amount of data. Based on these, and since the 1960’s, researchers proposed settlement pattern models to describe increasingly complex politico-economic mechanisms. Despite continuous excavations and detailed material studies, these models have only been slightly modified over the past 50 years. This raises questions on how integrative and representative currently employed settlement pattern models are, and if new approaches may support different relationships. This study is a spatial attempt to answer these questions via a comparative research of diachronic local/regional trajectories in three valleys from the south central coast of Cyprus: the Kouris, the Vasilikos and the Maroni. It examines the association between the valleys’ surveyed and excavated data with current large-scale interpretations, focusing on human-landscape relations in open (landscape), constructed (architecture) and concealed (burials) spaces. Underscoring a pattern between natural and cognitive landscape with materially expressed identities, this study offers a novel conceptualisation of multiple scales of relations throughout the Bronze Age. Consequently, it underpins the significance of a deep understanding of local histories, prior to the formation and/or use of any generalised settlement pattern models to describe any chronological period. Finally, it supports integrative methodologies for material evidence associated with groups of people that are hardly visible in large-scale reconstructions of politico-economic relations

Establishing a baseline for the study of maritime cultural heritage in the Gaza Strip

As a result of its geographic location, cultural diversity and historical trajectory, the Gaza strip is a key zone of scholarly enquiry and has a central role in the historical, social, political, economic, legislative and environmental discourses for the wider region. Existing historical knowledge of Gaza is dominated by combative narrative trends that emphasise the events of the 20th and 21st centuries and invoke archaeology extensively. In this context, cycles of material preservation and damage—often accompanying other forms of violence—have attracted the attention of academics and international media. Among the corollaries of this situation, is the destruction and marginalisation of vulnerable cultural heritage, particularly maritime cultural heritage, which is subjected to additional environmental, climatic, and anthropogenic pressures. As a means of countering the challenges on current field research in the region and to further assess the damage and threats faced by archaeological fabric, this paper combines data from coastal and archaeological research conducted in the Gaza Strip to create a benchmark for the study of its maritime archaeology. Additional information on the alteration of coastal landscape is deduced through the analysis of aerial photographs and satellite imagery. This study falls within the scope of the Maritime Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and Africa Project (MarEA). MarEA aims to comprehensively document and assess vulnerable maritime archaeology (underwater, nearshore, coastal) and produce baseline information that can enhance existing infrastructure on archaeological monitoring and management.</p

Big Data in Maritime Archaeology: Challenges and Prospects from the Middle East and North Africa

The Middle East and North Africa have witnessed a surfeit of geospatial data collection projects, resulting in big databases with powerful deductive capacities. Despite the valuable insights and expansive evidentiary record offered by those databases, emphasis on anthropogenic threats to cultural heritage, combined with a limited integration of local perspectives, have raised important questions on the ethical and epistemological dimensions of big data. This paper contextualizes maritime cultural heritage (MCH) in those debates through the lens of the Maritime Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa project (MarEA). MarEA is developing a unique for the region database for MCH designed to amalgamate a baseline record emphasizing spatial location, state of preservation, and vulnerability. This record will form a stepping stone toward finer-grained research on MCH and its interdisciplinary intersections. It is also developed as an information resource to facilitate local collaborators in prioritizing site monitoring and developing documentation, management, and mitigation strategies.</p