Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FIHELaD (Factors In Home and Environment Language Development)
Berichtszeitraum: 2023-06-01 bis 2025-07-31
FIHELaD introduced a novel interdisciplinary approach to the study of factors affecting the development of home and environment languages in Greek-German heritage language children attending mainstream schools in the EU. The project combined psycholinguistic methods with classroom-based research to bridge the gap between experimental and educational perspectives. Heritage language children, a subset of bilingual children, acquire their minority language at home and their majority language through schooling and community interaction. FIHELaD focused on two groups: Greek-German bilingual children of Greek descent in Germany, who acquire Greek as their home (minority) language and German as their environment (majority) language. German-Greek bilingual children of German descent in Greece, who acquire Greek as their majority language and German as their minority language. Most existing studies investigate the influence of linguistic and extra-linguistic person-level factors on acquisition outcomes in either the home or the environment language independently. By contrast, FIHELaD examined the developmental trajectory of these factors in both languages simultaneously, addressing their interaction and mutual influence. The project’s central aim was to determine to what extent linguistic and extra-linguistic person-level factors predict convergence or divergence in sentence processing when Greek functions as a minority versus a majority language, as well as the direction and magnitude of these effects. To achieve this, FIHELaD developed a comprehensive experimental battery that fills a key methodological gap in bilingualism research. It integrates: Offline measures (comprehension tasks, questionnaires), real-time measures (visual-world eye-tracking), cognitive and didactic assessments, advanced statistical modelling. This combination allows the project to reveal how bilingual children parse complex syntactic structures and to link behavioural outcomes with underlying processing mechanisms. Given the diverse linguistic backgrounds represented in EU classrooms, understanding these factors is crucial for supporting the academic success of heritage language speakers and informing evidence-based educational practices.
i. Invited Talks/Teaching
- Pantoula, K. (2024). Individual factors in the processing of Greek contrastive focus by Greek heritage language children. Cyprus Acquisition Team Laboratory Colloquium [virtually via MS-Teams]. University of Cyprus. (6 March 2024). Nicosia, Cyprus.
- Pantoula, K. (2024). The processing of contrastive focus by Greek heritage language children. Workshop on Greek as a Heritage Language: Psycho-socio-linguistic research & educational approaches [Oral presentation]. National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. (26 June 2024). Athens, Greece.
- Pantoula, K. (2025). Psycholinguistic approaches to bilingualism: Individual factors in heritage language acquisition. Linguistics Colloquium. The American College of Greece - Deree College. (1 April 2025). Athens, Greece.
- Pantoula, K. (2025).Language and Brain: From Modularity to Heritage Language Acquisition. Course: Introduction to Linguistics. National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Department of Educational Studies. (13 May 2025). Athens, Greece.
ii. FIHELaD took part in the organization of the following events:
- Thematic section: Linguistics and Bilingualism, 1st Summer School for High School students of the School of Philosophy, NKUA (2 July 2024). Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics Laboratory, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.
- Thematic section: Bilingualism. 2nd Summer School for High School students of the School of Philosophy, NKUA (26 June 2025). Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics Laboratory, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.
- Pantoula, K. (2024). Individual factors in the processing of Greek contrastive focus by Greek heritage language children. Cyprus Acquisition Team Laboratory Colloquium [virtually via MS-Teams]. University of Cyprus. (6 March 2024). Nicosia, Cyprus.
- Pantoula, K. (2024). The processing of contrastive focus by Greek heritage language children. Workshop on Greek as a Heritage Language: Psycho-socio-linguistic research & educational approaches [Oral presentation]. National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. (26 June 2024). Athens, Greece.
- Pantoula, K. (2025). Psycholinguistic approaches to bilingualism: Individual factors in heritage language acquisition. Linguistics Colloquium. The American College of Greece - Deree College. (1 April 2025). Athens, Greece.
- Pantoula, K. (2025).Language and Brain: From Modularity to Heritage Language Acquisition. Course: Introduction to Linguistics. National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Department of Educational Studies. (13 May 2025). Athens, Greece.
ii. FIHELaD took part in the organization of the following events:
- Thematic section: Linguistics and Bilingualism, 1st Summer School for High School students of the School of Philosophy, NKUA (2 July 2024). Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics Laboratory, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.
- Thematic section: Bilingualism. 2nd Summer School for High School students of the School of Philosophy, NKUA (26 June 2025). Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics Laboratory, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.
FIHELaD has advanced the state of the art in several key ways. Traditionally, research on heritage language acquisition has examined either the majority or the minority language in isolation, focusing on specific age groups of bilingual children. FIHELaD moved beyond this approach by testing how person-level factors influence both the majority and minority languages of a given language pair, in children aged 5-12, within a classroom learning context. For the first time, FIHELaD applied contrastive focus in a visual-world eye-tracking experiment to investigate the developmental trajectory of the same minority and majority language in contact situations, while accounting for their differing typological focus properties. Furthermore, FIHELaD explored the predictive factors shaping bilingual language outcomes by measuring not only psycholinguistic but also sociolinguistic person-level variables. Finally, FIHELaD triangulated findings by integrating multiple sources of behavioural data (offline measures, real-time gaze tracking, and pupillometry) combined with advanced statistical modelling. This approach shed light on apparent discrepancies between offline and online findings within the same population, task, and grammatical construction. The findings from FIHELaD have important implications for research, education, and policy. For researchers, the project’s novel methodology can inspire future studies on heritage speakers across different language pairs. For educators, the results can guide targeted instruction to strengthen heritage speakers’ communicative abilities in daily life. For policymakers, the insights can support more effective language choices in high-stakes contexts, such as asylum hot-spots, to facilitate communication between migrants and officials.