In the vast literature on language attrition, studies on the role of extralinguistic factors in language retention, particularly concerning foreign language (FL) skills acquired in formal instructional contexts, are scarce. We address this issue by focusing on the impact of the frequency of FL use, both extramural and in the classroom, and…

Many parents in the UK enrol their children in Greek supplementary schools so the children can learn and maintain the Greek language and culture in parallel with English mainstream education. Despite fears about the effects of this heritage language (Greek) use on children's skills in the majority language (English), research on these somewhat…

This study examined the linguistic and individual-level factors that render case marking a vulnerable domain in English-dominant Greek heritage children. We also investigated whether heritage language (HL) children can use case-marking cues to interpret (non-)canonical sentences in Greek similarly to their monolingual peers. A group of six- to…

This study explores the development of anaphora resolution (AR) in late sequential bilinguals, namely, adult Greek learners of Spanish at three proficiency levels (intermediate, lower advanced, upper advanced). The use of an overt/null pronominal subject anaphor is investigated in three discourse contexts: topic-continuity (a single antecedent…

The present paper reports on a questionnaire survey conducted in the course of a broader research project on bilingualism (BALED). It compares two groups of Albanian immigrant parents in Greece with respect to their practices for supporting minority language development. The first group includes parents (N = 35) whose children receive systematic…

Grammatical and lexical cohesion are necessary conditions to guarantee a text's coherence (Halliday and Hasan 1976). Grammatical cohesion is classified into four types of relation: reference, conjunction, substitution, and ellipsis. This study aims to investigate the use of the cohesive device of reference in written discourse produced by…

In a world where multilinguals outnumbered monolinguals, the study of the third language (L3) acquisition has been an area of interest for many researchers. This case study investigates the lexical cross-linguistic influence of previously acquired languages on the subsequent acquisition of English as L3 by Pomak multilingual speakers residing in…

Several studies have revealed the cognitive and linguistic benefits of balanced bilingualism, but the research on balanced biliteracy is still in its initial stages (Marinis et al. submitted. "Biliteracy Education Impacts on Cognition Selectively"). This study investigates the positive effects of balanced biliteracy on the development of…

A recurring question in the literature of heritage language acquisition, and more generally of bilingual acquisition, is whether all linguistic domains are sensitive to input reduction and to cross-linguistic influence and to what extent. According to the Interface Hypothesis, morphosyntactic phenomena regulated by discourse-pragmatic conditions…

The focus of this paper is on the relationship between Albanian speakers' ethnolinguistic vitality (EV) perceptions and their language maintenance, language use and choice patterns. A subjective EV questionnaire, and a language usage questionnaire capturing domain-specific language use was completed by 200 Albanian immigrants of first and second…

This paper reports our findings and observations on the difficulties of university students learning Greek as a foreign language at the University of Thessaly. A group of medical students, whose native language was Arabic, answered two questionnaires concerning their use of and competence in Greek. The results showed that first and second year…