This paper investigates the first language acquisition of clitic pronouns in CG, focusing on an exceptional pattern of clitic (mis) placement attested in early data. An elicited production experiment is performed by 50 children from three age groups (age group A: 2;6--3;0, age group B: 3;1--3;6 and age group C: 3;7--4;0). The results obtained reveal that clitic placement in enclisis contexts is adult-like from the onset, whereas one third of the children aged 2;6 to 3;0 misplace clitics in proclisis contexts. Clitic (mis)placement in CG is interpreted within an interface account within which the syntactic outcome is filtered through a PF-controlled procedure. Clitic placement in CG is regulated by a PF filter that requires that clitic pronouns in CG are suffixes to the initial constituent within their Intonation phrase. Young CG-children originally misinterpret this requirement and assume that clitics obligatorily follow the verb within the verb-clitic cluster.

This paper adopts a social networks approach to investigate language variation and maintenance in Cypriot Romeika, a Greek variety spoken by an enclave community of Turkish Cypriots situated in the north of Cyprus. The variety, which has been in isolation for many decades due to political reasons, did not undergo the koineisation processes that took place in Cypriot Greek and thus not only has it preserved “archaic” phenomena that are unavailable in the Cypriot Greek koine, but it also includes several intradialectal geographical isoglosses that were available prior to koineisation. This paper presents the history of the community and its language and discusses why this linguistic situation has voided the processes of koineisation at work in the rest of the Greek-speaking parts of the island. It further explores the sociolinguistic factors involved in language maintenance, including the strong ties between language and identity, and the use of Cypriot Romeika as the language of the home, as well as the attitudes of its speakers towards the Cypriot Greek koine.

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