"Sulla comprensione delle frasi scisse: costruzione di un test sperimentale"

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to investigate cleft sentences, which still represent in many respects a controversial phenomenon. For such purpose I have decided to propose a detailed discussion about the main theoretic analyses proposed by different linguists to date, which involve in particular the syntactic and pragmatic aspects of these structures. Furthermore I recommend a series of observations and useful instructions for the design of a comprehension test, which can test the acquisition of cleft sentences in subjects of different ages (6, 8 and 10 years old). The reason why linguists have considered for decades the phenomenon of cleft sentences a golden oldie is due to their unique syntactic structure. In fact cleft sentences, according to the information state of the costituents contained in them, are special as they exhibit a rather uncommon syntactic form to achieve the separation of the prominent part, either focal or topical, from the background of the clause. Therefore, I will try to consider all their peculiarities in order to obtain a complete vision of this phenomenon, keeping in mind also the implications that these features have on the acquisition and the use of clefts. In spite of being common in different European and not European languages (cfr. Sornicola (1994)), there are no other studies on the comprehension of cleft sentences in Italian so far, therefore I will use other researches made on V-S constructions in different European languages, e.g. English (cfr. Von Berger (1996)) and Greek (cfr. Kapetangianni (2011)). It is important to collect the largest number of materials as possible in order to make theoretical observations, which can be compatible with the Italian language and which can also represent the starting point for the construction of this test and provide a complete set of motivated expectations. As regards the Italian language I will focus on the research conducted by Del Puppo (2016), who has investigated cleft sentences with respect to the elicited production of speakers of different ages; in addition, I will introduce some observations made by Roggia (2009) as regards functions and types of clefts in Italian, and Bianchi and Bocci (2012) for the focalization in Italian as regards the syntax-prosody interface. Finally, I have taken into consideration the works of Volpato (2010) and Adani et al. (2010) to investigate the influence of the features of number and gender on the comprehension, since they will be tested intensively during the experimental phase. The following research is partly focused on the problematic structure of clefts, partly on the design of an effective comprehension test and on the factors which should be considered to avoid confounds on the experimental results.

The first part of this work offers an overview on the previous literature on clefts, with particular reference to descriptive grammar, generative semantics and syntax in a cartographic approach. It follows theoretical and pragmatical observations on the effects that different factors have on L1 acquisition, e.g. word-order, lexicon, number and gender; finally, after a detailed description of the selected tasks for this experiment, I will build the test proposing the phrases and the images, which could be used in future researches. The aim of this thesis is therefore to present some issues of clefts from theoretical perspectives. Based on previous data, this thesis presents some arguments for the derivation of clefts and tries to contribute to the ongoing investigation on the information-structural impact of clefts and their acquisition through the construction of a comprehension test, hoping that it can represent the base for further researches in acquisitional field.