This thesis investigates the role of executive functions in language processing in primary progressive aphasia (PPA), with a particular focus on syntactic ambiguity resolution and narrative discourse production. The main aim was to determine whether language impairment in PPA can be explained as a purely linguistic deficit or as the result of an interaction between language-specific mechanisms and domain-general cognitive processes, such as executive functions. To address this question the study combined two complementary approaches. First, a behavioral self-paced reading paradigm was used to investigate the processing of garden path sentences in Greek. Second, an eye tracking case-series study provided fine-grained evidence of real-time processing mechanisms during temporary syntactic ambiguity resolution. Third, narrative production was examined across both oral and written modalities, by employing the following measures of microstructure: syntactic complexity, lexical diversity and proposition density, alongside executive function assessments. Narrative production was elicited through two paradigms: picture sequence and single picture description. The results indicate that persons with PPA (henceforth, PwPPA) exhibited reduced accuracy in garden path sentence comprehension, while no differences were found in corresponding reaction times. Eye tracking data further refined the pattern observed behaviorally: processing difficulty was predominantly found in disambiguation and post-disambiguation regions, thus reflecting the instability in maintaining and integrating revised representations in real-time. In narrative production, impairments were most pronounced in the oral modality in the conditions that required real-time sequencing. Notably, written performance was better in the PwPPA than their oral narrative production, while executive function measures predicted narrative production only selectively: more specifically, executive function measures predicted oral narrative performance only in sequenced pictures (vs. single picture description), while there were no associations between executive functions and written narrative production. The overall findings show that the written modality in narrative production reduces the load on the patients’ executive functions by alleviating real-time processing constraints. Overall, the findings support the account that language processing mechanisms interact with domain-general executive functions in PPA, particularly under conditions of increased cognitive demands such as those inflicted by temporary syntactic ambiguity and oral narrative production of picture sequences. Executive functions appear as key predictors of syntactic revision and narrative discourse organization. The thesis highlights the importance of combining both linguistic and cognitive factors in models of language processing and in the assessment of language impairment in PPA.

Vowel production and lexical stress are fundamental to effective communication. Yet, their developmental trajectory remains insufficiently understood across languages, partly because studies that span a broad age range focus exclusively on stressed vowels, and partly because research is frequently restricted to age groups that do not encompass the full course of development. This study, therefore, aims to trace the developmental progression of both stressed and unstressed vowels, from the preschool years through to adulthood, while also examining developmental changes in the degree of stress contrast and the acoustic correlates of stress. To this end, a cross-sectional study was conducted with 72 Greek-speaking participants with typical development, evenly divided into nine gender-balanced age groups: 3-, 5-, 7-, 9-, 11-, 13-, 15-, 17-year-olds, and adults (4 males and 4 females per age group). Participants performed a delayed repetition task, producing the five Greek vowels [i, ε, ?, o, u] embedded within two sets of words presented in a carrier phrase. The first set (Word Group 1) consisted of disyllabic pseudowords of the form /pVpV/, enabling the examination of two metrical foot types (trochaic and iambic) with vowels in both syllables analyzed as stressed and unstressed. The second set (Word Group 2) included trisyllabic real Greek words of the form /CVCVCV/, in which the vowel of the second syllable was investigated in pre-stressed, stressed, and post-stressed positions. Acoustic measurements included (non-)normalized values related to duration, intensity, and F0, alongside spectral characteristics (i.e., formant frequencies and token-to-token vowel variability) and spatial features of vowel production (i.e., vowel space area and vowel centralization within the acoustic vowel space). Statistical analyses explored the effects of age, sex/gender, foot type, stress condition, and vowel quality, as well as age-related differences in variability and percentage change among the stress conditions. Additionally, the study examined the relationships between temporal and spatial vowel features and assessed the relative contribution of all acoustic parameters to stress marking throughout development. Results showed that although adult-like patterns, such as the shape of the vowel space, intrinsic vowel characteristics, stress-related patterns, the spatial aspects of vowel reduction, and the relationship between temporal and spatial vowel features, emerged by school age, other adult-level characteristics, including raw acoustic values, gender-related differences, variability, the degree of stress contrast, and the relative contribution of various acoustic features to stress marking, emerged much later, with vowel and stress development being largely complete shortly after age 15. Developmental trajectories were completed earlier for the unstressed vowels than for the stressed ones, and for certain vowel qualities over others, in terms of temporal, spectral, and/or spatial characteristics, while the development of the degree of stress contrast revealed more persistent or systematic challenges for the trochaic foot compared to the iambic foot across all vowel measures. These findings were considered in light of various contributing factors (including speech motor control, anatomy, physiology, perceptual attunement, sensitivity to prosody, language experience) and theoretical models of speech production development and vowel reduction, along with the Hyperarticulation Hypothesis, the Adaptive Dispersion Theory, and the Trochaic-Bias Hypothesis.

The issue of variability in speech production is central to theories of speech production and development, as it raises fundamental questions about the nature of speech units and their phonetic instantiations in fluent speech. Various sources give rise to variability in speech, including phonetic context, developmental factors, and coarticulation. Within the framework of articulatory phonology, variability is viewed as a natural consequence of speech organized in terms of overlapping, dynamically coordinated articulatory gestures. Coarticulation, in particular, reflects the temporal organization of gestures and therefore provides a window into the mechanisms underlying speech motor planning and intergestural organization in both mature and in developing speech. The main aim of this dissertation is to examine aspects of temporal and spatial variability in Greek children, adolescents and adults by using acoustic and ultrasound analysis. In particular, we examine the factors that influence segmental duration and lingual coarticulation- both vowel-to-consonant (anticipatory) and consonant-to-vowel (carryover) coarticulation- in 7-year-old children, 14-year-old adolescents and adults. Previous acoustic and articulatory studies in Greek have offered important insight into segmental duration and lingual coarticulation in adult speech (Fourakis, 1986, Nicolaidis, 1997, 2002, Sfakianaki, 2012, Baltazani & Nicolaidis, 2013, Nirgianaki, 2014,), while developmental aspects of speech have been investigated by means of acoustic analysis (Okalidou et al., 2010, Nicolaidis et al., 2019, Kelmali, 2020, Christodoulidou et al., 2023). The present dissertation extends this body of research for Greek by presenting the first ultrasound investigation of lingual coarticulation in children, adolescents and adults. The acoustic analysis showed that segmental duration varies as a function of the articulatory characteristics of the segments, context, gender and age. The ultrasound analysis showed that the degree of anticipatory vowel-to-consonant and carryover consonant-to-vowel coarticulation differed as a function of the articulatory characteristics of the segments across ages. Differences in the degree of coarticulation among children, adolescents and adults were segment-specific, suggesting that the development of coarticulation progresses in parallel with the development of articulatory skills for particular sounds. These findings support the coproduction framework and the Degree of Articulatory Constraint (DAC) model (Recasens et al., 1997), highlighting that coarticulatory patterns are constrained by biomechanical properties of the articulators. In addition, they highlight that coarticulation also reflects the ongoing refinement of speech motor planning during speech development.

This dissertation examines the representations of conscious efforts made by women in neo-Victorian fiction to form solidaristic bonds across nineteenth-century social and ethnic structural divisions, in order to resist patriarchal oppression in its manifold guises. It argues that the portrayals of these women’s relationships respond to feminist debates on difference and illustrate the process whereby women actively and consciously offer support, or work together, to defy oppression and alleviate suffering, within the context of the narratives. My subject matter is approached through the theoretical intersection between neo-Victorian studies and scholarship on feminist solidarity and involves a cultural-historical approach to my primary texts, which is complemented by a select body of theoretical insights tailored to the individual concerns of each text, such as utopian feminist theory, queer theory, critical whiteness studies, and transnational feminist theory. The neo-Victorian texts under discussion here all feature supportive relationships between women differentially situated across the spectrums of social class and/or ethnicity and include Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White (2002), Sarah Waters’s Fingersmith (2002), Kate Grenville’s Sarah Thornhill (2011), and Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden, the 2016 South-Korean film adaptation of Waters’s Fingersmith. My dissertation thus illustrates neo-Victorianism’s potential to critically intervene in feminist discourses and debates and provide paradigms for the establishment of feminist solidarity in the present through an appraisal of the past. In this process, I show that neo-Victorian fiction’s engagement with feminist solidarity reveals that solidarity is not a monolithic, or universally applicable concept, but rather one that should be constantly renegotiated to address women’s diverse and intersecting identities and cultural locations.

Η παρούσα μελέτη εξετάζει το πώς το θέατρο έχει παρέμβει μέσω διαφόρων μορφών και αισθητικών προσεγγίσεων στις πολιτικές συζητήσεις που περιστρέφονται γύρω από την επιβολή της κατάστασης εξαίρεσης στην πολιτική διακυβέρνηση και την κοινωνική συνθήκη από τη δεκαετία του 1990. Η επανεμφάνιση της ιμπεριαλιστικής στρατιωτικής βίας και η χειραγώγηση της κοινής γνώμης σχετικά με τον πόλεμο του Ιράκ το 2003 εξετάζεται μέσα από τη μελέτη των έργων Stuff Happens του David Hare (2004) και Called to Account των Richard Norton-Taylor και Nicolas Kent (2007). Διαφορετικές πτυχές του κρατικού ελέγχου των προσφυγικών και μεταναστευτικών ροών αναλύονται μέσω των θεατρικών διαπραγματεύσεων που παρουσιάζονται στα έργα The War Boys της Naomi Wallace (1993) και Thrush της Caridad Svich (2006). Τα έργα Back of the Throat του Yussef El-Guindi (2006), Product του Mark Ravenhill και The Riots της Gillian Slovo (2011) απεικονίζουν πτυχές της διαμόρφωσης των τακτικών καταστολής και αστυνόμευσης μέσω των φυλετικών και ταξικών φαντασιώσεων του Άλλου. Το αναλυτικό ενδιαφέρον για τα συγκεκριμένα θεατρικά έργα δεν ήταν μόνο θεματικό, αλλά πρωτίστως αισθητικό. Αν και τα έργα ανήκουν σε διαφορετικά είδη και αισθητικές προσεγγίσεις (συμπεριλαμβανομένου του αυτολεξεί θεάτρου ή θεάτρου verbatim, της ποιητικής φόρμας και του μονολόγου), υποστηρίζω ότι προσεγγίζουν με διάφορους τρόπους την έννοια του μεταδραματικού θεάτρου, όπως αυτή διατυπώθηκε από τον Hans-Thies Lehmann. Αυτό οφείλεται στο γεγονός ότι απομακρύνονται από τις ρεαλιστικές δραματικές αναπαραστάσεις και επιχειρούν να εμπλέξουν και να προκαλέσουν το κοινό τόσο ηθικά όσο και πολιτικά με τρόπους που αντικαθιστούν τη συμβατική κατάσταση θέασης. Εστιάζοντας στις αισθητικές και φιλοσοφικές αντιλήψεις των Theodor Adorno, Jacques Ranciere, Judith Butler και άλλων συγγραφέων, υπογραμμίζω την ιδέα ότι σε μια εποχή κρατικής ασυδοσίας, όξυνσης του εθνικιστικού και ρατσιστικού λόγου, καθώς και της κοινωνικοπολιτικής δυσαρέσκειας, το ζήτημα του πολιτικού στη θεατρική επιτέλεση αντιμετωπίζεται πιο αποτελεσματικά όχι μέσω των συμβατικών μορφών κοινωνικοπολιτικά στρατευμένου θεάτρου, αλλά μέσω αισθητικών παραστατικών προτάσεων που επιχειρούν να διαπεράσουν την ίδια τη δομή της αντιπροσώπευσης/αναπαράστασης, της συναισθηματικοποίησης και της διαμεσολαβημένης ορατότητας.

The present thesis explored the acquisition of recursion in L1 Greek children. Although a fundamental property of human language, recursion may be a challenge in L1 acquisition as shown by previous research with L1 English, L1 German and L1 Japanese children (Roeper, 2011) as well as with L1 French children (Roberge, Perez-Leroux & Frolova, 2018). Two of the factors that are attested to affect the development of recursion is age (Perez-Leroux, Castilla-Earls, Bejar & Massam, 2012) and components of working memory (Arslan, Hohenberger & Verbrugge, 2017). Moreover, the acquisition of recursion seems to depend on the type and level of embedded structures (Limbach & Adone, 2010; Roeper & Snyder, 2005). Our focus was on recursion in adjectives, subject- and object relative clauses and noun phrase modification in the form of prepositional phrases and possessive genitives. We also examined whether recursion is an independent linguistic process or if it is affected by executive control mechanisms, such as updating and other cognitive systems, such as working memory. To this purpose we administered a variety of tasks to three groups of Greek children, 4-, 6- and 8-year-old. The tasks were an expressive vocabulary task, as a measure of general language development in Greek (Vogindroukas, Protopapas & Sideridis, 2009), a Backwards Digit Recall task measuring verbal working memory and an N-back task measuring updating. Regarding recursion, we employed picture-selection tasks to explore comprehension and a picture-based elicitation task for production. We expected that the development of recursion in Greek would follow the same steps as in other languages previously studied as recursion is considered to be a fundamental property of the human language. The results confirmed this prediction with the exception of the second type of recursion (in relative clauses) which presented some problems. Age, working memory and language development seem to exert some effect on the development of recursion, but no firm assumption can be made since the acquisition of recursion is not yet complete till the age of the oldest group.