Своє – чуже. Дике – культурне. Базові структури міфологічних когнітивних моделей (до проблеми інваріанта і трансформації в інформаційному просторі)

Відтворення логічних законів міфологічних когнітивних структур, необхідне для виокремлення інваріантів у трансформованому емпіричному етнографічному масиві, зумовлює пошук базових когнітивних структур міфологічної доби. Базові когнітивні структури елементарних суспільств – бінарні символічні класифікації, які починають розгортатися із просторово-часової дихотомії: освоєний – неосвоєний простір, час архетипів – час їхньої реалізації. У статті аналізуються системи спорідненості дуально-родового суспільства, які, на думку авторки, використовувалися як засіб формалізації ієрархічної класифікації понять міфологічної доби.The reconstruction of the logical laws of mythological cognitive structures which is necessary to single out the invariants in the trasforming ethnographic material leads us to the search of basic cognitive structures of the mythological epoch. The basic cognitive structures of elementary societies are the binaric symbolical classifications which begin to develop from the spatialtemporal opposition: assimilated space – space which is not assimilated, the time of the archetypes – the time of their realization. In the article there is an analysis of a system of consanguinity of dual-clan society which on author's mind was used as means of formalization of the hierarchial classification of the mythological epoch concepts

Object Omission in Contact: Object Clitics and Definite Articles in the West Thracian Greek (Evros) Dialect

We examine spontaneous production data from the dialect of Modern West Thracian Greek (mwtg) (the local dialect of Evros) with regard to a hypothesis of syntactic borrowing of verbal transitivity. We argue that mwtg allows omission of the direct object with specific reference, in contrast to Standard Modern Greek (smg) and other Modern Greek (mg) dialects (spoken in Greece), but similar to Turkish. Object omission in mwtg is possible only in contexts where smg and other mg dialects show obligatory use of the 3rd-person clitic. We argue that syntactic borrowing in the case of language contact follows the transfer with second language learners: the relevant elements that host uninterpretable features are used optionally. Moreover, the definite article, in contrast to the indefinite article, is also affected by language contact. The 3rd-person clitic and the definite article are affected by contact as uninterpretable clusters of features. We claim that interpretability plays a significant role in transitivity in cases of language contact. © Nikolaos Lavidas and Ianthi Maria Tsimpli, 2019

Reference maintenance in the narratives of Albanian–Greek and Russian–Greek children with Developmental Language Disorder: A study on crosslinguistic effects

Although a considerable number of studies have shown D(eterminer) elements, i.e. determiners and pronominal clitics, to be particularly vulnerable to impairment in monolingual children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), little is known about the use of appropriate or/and grammatically correct referring expressions in the children’s narrative production. Grammars of languages that differ in the way they encode and realize their D system may be viewed as the ideal context to disentangle the contribution of language (L1) transfer and morpho-syntactic impairment to reference use in the L2. The aim of the current study is to examine L1 effects in the use of referring expressions of 5- to 11-year-old Albanian–Greek and Russian–Greek children with DLD, along with typically developing (TD) bilingual groups speaking the same language pairs when maintaining reference to characters in their narratives. The three languages differ in their D elements, since Albanian and Greek have morphologically rich D systems in contrast to Russian, which lacks a definiteness distinction. Children produced oral narratives in Greek by using the Greek versions of two stories (Cat and Dog) which have been designed within the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) tool of the COST Action IS0804. Results show that the groups did not differ in referential appropriateness. Regarding grammatical correctness, both groups with DLD produced more ungrammatical forms than TD children, while Russian–Greek children with DLD produced more ungrammatical article-less NPs than the other groups. The overall results reflect the joint contribution of language impairment and L1-specific typological properties in the definite forms used for character maintenance by bilingual children with DLD. © The Author(s) 2020

Bilingualism Effects on the Cognitive Flexibility of Autistic Children: Evidence From Verbal Dual-Task Paradigms

The deficit in cognitive flexibility (i.e., the ability to adapt cognitive behavior to changing contexts) is one of the most prominent characteristics of autistic individuals. Inflexibility may manifest in restricted interests and increased susceptibility to the effects of misinformation either through inefficient inhibition of non-target information or deficient recall of correct information. Bilingualism has been shown to enhance executive functions in both typically developing children and autistic children; yet, the effect of bilingualism on cognitive flexibility in autism remains underexplored. In this study, we used verbal dual-tasks to compare cognitive flexibility across 50 monolingual autistic and 50 bilingual autistic children, and 50 monolingual and 50 bilingual typically developing children. The children were also administered language ability tests and a nonverbal global-local cognitive flexibility task, in order to investigate whether performance in the dual-tasks would be modulated by the children’s language and executive function skills. The bilingual autistic children outperformed their monolingual autistic peers in the dual-tasks. The strength of the bilingualism effect, however, was modulated by the type of language processing that interfered with the target information in each dual-task, which suggests that the bilingual autistic children calibrated their processing resources and efficiently adapted them to the changing demands of the dualtask only to the extent that the task did not exceed their language abilities. Bilingual autistic children relied on their executive functions rather than on their language abilities while performing in the dual-tasks. The overall results show that bilingualism compensates for the reduced cognitive flexibility in autism. © 2021 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Theory of mind, executive functions, and syntax in bilingual children with autism spectrum disorder

Impairments in Theory of Mind (ToM) are a core feature of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). ToM may be enhanced by various factors, including bilingualism, executive functions (EF), and complex syntax. This work investigates the language-cognition interface in ASD by exploring whether ToM can be enhanced by bilingualism, whether such ToM boosts would be due to EF or syntax, and whether routes to mentalizing would differ between bilinguals and monolinguals on the spectrum. Twenty-seven monolingual Greek-speaking and twenty-nine bilingual Albanian-Greek children with ASD were tested on ToM reasoning in verbal and low-verbal ToM tasks, an executive function 2-back task, and a sentence repetition task. Results revealed that bilingual children with ASD performed better than monolinguals with ASD in the low-verbal ToM and the 2-back tasks. In the sentence repetition task, bilinguals scored higher than monolinguals in complex sentences, and specifically in adverbials and relatives. Regarding the relations between ToM, EF, and sentence repetition, the monolingual group’s performance in the verbal ToM tasks was associated with complement syntax, whereas, for the bilingual children with ASD, performance in both verbal and low-verbal ToM tasks was associated with EF and adverbial clause repetition. The overall pattern of results suggests that mentalizing may follow distinct pathways across the two groups. © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

The impact of bilingualism on the narrative ability and the executive functions of children with autism spectrum disorders

While there is ample evidence that monolingual children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) face difficulties with narrative story-telling and executive functions (EF), there is considerable uncertainty about how bilingualism impacts these skills in autism. The current study explores the effect of bilingualism on the narrative and EF skills of forty 7-to-12-year-old bilingual and monolingual children with ASD, as well as forty age-matched bilingual and monolingual children of typical development (TD). Narrative production data were elicited using the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument (ENNI; Schneider et al., 2005), which was developed to measure narrative production at a microstructural and macrostructural level. The same children were administered two EF tasks, namely, a global-local visual attention task and a 2-back working memory task. In story-telling, bilingual children with ASD achieved higher scores than monolingual children with ASD on story structure complexity and use of adverbial clauses, and they tended to use significantly fewer ambiguous referential forms than their monolingual peers with ASD. In the global-local task, bilingual children with ASD were faster and more accurate in global trials than monolingual children with ASD, who tended to be more susceptible to interference from locally presented information than the other experimental groups. Higher accuracy and faster response times were also observed for bilingual children with ASD in the 2-back task. Further correlation analyses between the story-telling and EF tasks revealed that bilingual children with ASD drew on a broader range of EF in narrative production than their monolingual peers. The overall findings reveal that bilingual children with ASD outperformed their monolingual peers with ASD in both the microstructure and macrostructure of their narrative production, as well as in their visual attention and working memory skills. © 2020 Elsevier Inc