inda mbu, nambu or ine ti pu? acquiring complex structures in Cypriot Greek

The current study investigates the hypothesis that certain Cypriot Greek (CG) whphrases show similar paths of acquisition with cleft sentences based on syntactic complexity. That is, wh-phrases of the inda (mbu)-type in CG can be decomposed in an abstract way as clefts, giving ine ti pu ‘what is it that’. Targeting a comparison between these two structures, wh-questions with inda (mbu) along with subjectand object-clefts were included in a production elicitation experiment given to children aged 2;7-6;4. The preliminary results raise several issues ranging from syntactic complexities and movement difficulties in the two structures to sociolinguistic factors and implications for the possible diglossic situation in the Greek Cypriot community.