Who are the CAT people?

The team currently revolves around an ever-growing number of researchers and students from Cyprus and abroad. The following people constitute the core team (faculty members, researchers, postgraduate students):

CAT Management CAT Members CAT Friends & Collaborators CAT Students Former CAT affiliates

CAT Management

Kleanthes Grohmann, PhD (Director, Cyprus Acquisition Team)

Kleanthes received his BA in Linguistics (First Class Honours) from the University of Wales, Bangor (now Bangor University) in 1996 and his PhD in Linguistics from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2000. After two years of postdocking in Germany, he came to UCY in 2003. As a trained theoretical linguist, his interests lie in biolinguistics at large from a generative perspective, with a research focus on architectural and operational issues within a minimalist approach to human language. His work includes syntactic theorizing about (multiple) Wh-questions, left dislocation constructions, Spell-Out issues, and the infamous Prolific Domains. Kleanthes has worked on German(ic) syntax as well as selected issues in Slavic, Romance, and other language families. More recently he got interested in Greek syntax, in particular the grammar of Cypriot Greek (also in comparison with Standard Modern Greek).

With the foundation of CAT, he's working on a second life in academia: applying his theoretical expertise to issues surrounding language development. As such, he's actively investigating young children's first (and second) language acquisition, with a local focus on Cypriot Greek, both typically developing and language-impaired, as well as mono- and bi-/multilingual.

Kleanthes is the (co-)author/editor of several research monographs, textbooks, and collected volumes, most recently The Cambridge Handbook of Biolinguistics (CUP, 2013, ed. with C. Boeckx) and Developments in the Acquisition of Clitics (CSP, 2014, ed. with T. Neokleous). He is also the founding co-editor of the journal Biolinguistics and the John Benjamins book series Language Faculty and Beyond. At the moment he serves a two-year term as Vice-Dean of the School of Humanities at the University of Cyprus.

Email: kleanthi AT ucy DOT ac DOT cy
Profile: http://www.ucy.ac.cy/~kleanthi.aspx
Homepage: http://www.kleanthes.biolinguistics.eu

Maria Kambanaros, PhD CSP MSPA (Clinical Assessor and Therapist, Cyprus Acquisition Team)

Maria Kambanaros received her PhD in 2004 from Flinders University of South Australia, School of Medicine, Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology with the dissertation Verb and Noun Retrieval in Bilingual Greek-English Individuals with Anomic Aphasia. She has published several papers investigating word production breakdown for verbs and nouns for Standard Modern Greek in monolingual and bilingual aphasic adults. She has extended her interest in lexical access for verbs and nouns to other clinical populations including specific language impairment (SLI) and schizophrenia.

Email: maria DOT kambanaros AT cut DOT ac DOT cy

Christiana Christodoulou, PhD (Research Manager, Cyprus Acquisition Team)

Christiana is currently a post-doctoral research associate and special scientist in the Department of English Studies at the University of Cyprus and post-doctoral research affiliate in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Department of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She holds a BA in English Language and Literature from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, an MA in Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics from the University of Essex, and a PhD in Linguistics from the University of British Columbia. Christiana has published on language acquisition and development in typical and atypical populations, language acquisition and development of Down Syndrome, theoretical syntax, and phonetics and phonology of (Cypriot) Greek. She has been teaching courses related to her field of expertise at the University of Cyprus since January 2013.

Email: cc26 AT mit DOT edu

Elena Papadopoulou, MA (Lab Coordinator, Cyprus Acquisition Team)

Elena received her BA in English Language and Linguistics from UCY in 2005 and her MA in Language Acquisition from the University of Essex in 2006. She is currently working towards a PhD supervised research by Dr Sonja Eisenbeiss and Prof. Andrew Radford in Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics/Language Acquisition at the University of Essex. The current PhD research investigates the acquisition of Wh-questions in Cypriot Greek from a generative perspective through the syntactic priming paradigm. Her interests extend to theoretical applications of syntax, as well as the study of L1 and L2 acquisition by both typically developing and language impaired populations.

Elena has been a member of the Psycholinguistic Group at the University of Essex for the last four years, investigating language acquisition and developmental or acquired disorders, using both on-line and off-line experimental techniques. She has also been an editor of the Essex Graduate Student Papers in Linguistics and an elected member of the Linguistic Association of Great Britain (LAGB) Student Committee. She has also co-authored two articles with Dr Kleanthes Grohmann as well as authored two manuals (password-protected), for DMDX and ELAN.

Right now she is working towards the PhD, coordinates CAT activities in her recent role as the Gen-CHILD Project Research Assistant, and teaches in the UCY Department of English Studies as a Special Teaching Staff member in English Linguistics.

Email: epapadb AT gmail DOT com

CAT Management CAT Members CAT Friends & Collaborators CAT Students Former CAT affiliates

CAT Members

Loukia Taxitari, PhD

Loukia received a PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Oxford (2009) and is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the new LexiKyp Project "Adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates CDI for Cypriot Greek: Development in Toddlers", funded by the Leventis Foundation.

Charalambos Themistocleous, PhD

Charalambos gained a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Athens (2011). His expertise includes phonetics and phonology, computational linguistics, research methodology, and statistical analysis.

Eleni Theodorou, PhD MSc SLT

Elena received her BA in Speech and Language Therapy from the Technological Institute of Patras (Greece) in 2001 and her MSc in Language and Communication Impairment in Children from the University of Sheffield in 2007. She then continued her studies as a doctoral student under Dr Kleanthes Grohmann's supervision at the Department of English Studies (UCY), where she successfully graduated with a PhD in Linguistics in fall 2013 with the PhD thesis entitled "Diagnosing Specific Language Impairment: The Case of Cypriot Greek" (marked 'excellent').

Her main research interest is the investigation of language deficits in Cypriot Greek-speaking children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). In addition to her research project, she is conducting different investigations related to Cypriot Greek first language acquisition issues of typically developing children, bilingual children, and language- impaired children within the CAT activities.

At the same time, Elena has been working as a Speech and Language Therapist for the Cyprus Ministry of Education, providing services to children in pre-primary and primary education for seven years. She is a Local Instructor of the MAKATON System, an augmentative communication system. She has also co-authored an article on voice-onset timing in Cypriot Greek with Areti Okalidou, Kakia Petinou, and Elena Karasimou (in press).

Email: theodorou.d.eleni AT ucy DOT ac DOT cy

Sviatlana Karpava, MA

Svetlana received her BA in Philology from the Belarus State University in 2003 and her MA in Applied Linguistics from the University of Cyprus in 2008, where she continued her studies as a PhD student under the supervision of Dr Kleanthes Grohmann. Her area of interest is generative syntax, semantics, and language acquisition. Svetlana participates in CAT and is going to investigate issues of adult/child second language acquisition of Greek, Cypriot Greek, and Russian. In February 2014, Svetlana successfully defended her PhD thesis with the title "Vulnerable Domains for Cross-Linguistic Influence in L2 Acquisition of Greek" (marked 'excellent'), which she is currently preparing for final submission. She is a faculty member at UCLan in Pyla, the University of Central Lancashire in Cyprus.

Email: karpava.sviatlana AT ucy DOT ac DOT cy

Koula Tantele, MSc

Koula is pursuing a PhD in Speech and Language Therapy in the CUT Department of Rehabilitation Sciences under Dr Maria Kambanaros's supervision.

Marina Varnava, MA

Marina graduated with an MA in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics at the UCY Department of English Studies in May 2012 under Dr Kleanthes Grohmann's supervision.

Natalia Pavlou, MA

As an undergraduate founding member of CAT, Natalia finished her BA in the UCY Department of English Studies (2010) and a Research MA in Linguistics at the University of York (2011). She is currently studying for a PhD in Linguistics at the University of Chicago.

Evangelia Leivada, MA

As an undergraduate founding member of CAT, Evelin afinished her BA in the UCY Department of English Studies (2011); she already held a BA in Linguistics (Mediterranean Studies) from the University of the Aegean, Rhodes. She then moved on to obtain an MA in Linguistics from the Autonomous University Barcelona (2012) and is currently pursuing a PhD in Linguistics at the University of Barcelona.

CAT Management CAT Members CAT Friends & Collaborators CAT Students Former CAT affiliates

CAT Friends & Collaborators

Friends of CAT and occasional collaborators include the following colleagues:

CAT Management CAT Members CAT Friends & Collaborators CAT Students Former CAT affiliates

CAT Students

Here is a list of some of the students that are engaged in CAT, especially the RMED Tutorials but also some research projects:

CAT Management CAT Members CAT Friends & Collaborators CAT Students Former CAT affiliates

Former CAT Affiliates

Our former CAT members and students include: