Postverbal Subjects in Child Italian: Argument Structure, Discourse and the Definiteness Effect

Autor/inn/en	Cairncross, Alex; Dal Pozzo, Lena
Titel	Postverbal Subjects in Child Italian: Argument Structure, Discourse and the Definiteness Effect
Quelle	In: First Language, 42 (2022) 3, S.333-360 (28 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Dal Pozzo, Lena)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0142-7237
DOI	10.1177/01427237211054247
Schlagwörter	Italian; Monolingualism; Language Acquisition; Adults; Comparative Analysis; Verbs; Phrase Structure; Task Analysis; Color; Pictorial Stimuli; Foreign Countries; Elementary School Students; Familiarity; Animation; Italy + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Italienisch; Sprachaneignung; Spracherwerb; Phrasenstruktur; Aufgabenanalyse; Colour; Farbbezeichnung; Farbe; Fantasieanregung; Ausland; Italien
Abstract	While previous work on postverbal subjects in Italian has shown that young children are sensitive to the effects of argument structure and definiteness, little is known about the acquisition of postverbal subjects at the VP-periphery. In response, the present study investigated such subjects under new-information focus by monolingual Italian children (6;1 - 7;4). For this, we employed an elicitation task and a forced-choice task. The results indicated that the children use postverbal subjects at the VP-periphery felicitously, although they do not perform at ceiling. Unexpectedly, the results also suggested possible remnant difficulty with the definiteness effect. However, after comparison with adult data we argue that this is not a developmental issue and instead may suggest that our children were aware that the definiteness effect is not about definiteness per se. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01