On the acquisition of Italian restrictive relative clauses in typical and atypical development

dc.contributor.advisor	Cardinaletti, Anna
dc.contributor.author	Pivi, Margherita <1984>	it_IT
dc.date.accessioned	2014-07-01T09:43:06Z
dc.date.available	2014-07-01T09:43:06Z
dc.date.issued	2014-01-21
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10579/4649
dc.description.abstract	This work presents the results of an elicited production experiment on Italian restrictive relative clauses, administered to 116 children aged 6-10 with typical development, and 14 children with atypical development aged 6-11 (7 with a diagnosis of dyslexia, 7 with suspected dyslexia, that is with evident school difficulties). The experiment was conceived within a wider project held at the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies of the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, aiming at eliciting different syntactic structures (cleft sentences, relative clauses, direct wh-questions and passive sentences) in the same groups of children. In our work, we concentrate on the acquisition of relative clauses, analyzing important asymmetries between typical and atypical development. Moreover, we present two task modifications included in Novogrodsky and Friedmann’s (2006) Preference Task, initially designed for Hebrew and adapted for several experiments on Italian (Utzeri, 2006; 2007; Volpato, 2010; Contemori, 2011; Guasti et al., 2012). Differently from the studies quoted above, we also analyzed the asymmetries between gap and resumptive ORs, regarding the status of the head (demonstrative pronoun quello/lexical DP) and the position of embedded subjects (preverbal/post-verbal). Importantly, this is the first study on Italian presenting data on the nature of the relative head, and the differences in elicited production between TD children and children with Developmental Dyslexia.	it_IT
dc.description.abstract	La tesi presenta i risultati di un esperimento di produzione elicitata di frasi relative restrittive in bambini italiani dai 6 ai 10 anni di età, con sviluppo tipico o dislessia. L'esperimento si inserisce in un progetto più ampio di elaborazione di un nuovo test di produzione volto a elicitare le seguenti strutture sintattiche: frasi relative soggetto/oggetto, frasi scisse soggetto/oggetto, passive e domande. Nella tesi ci focalizziamo sull'acquisizione delle relative restrittive nelle varie fasce d'età e sulle asimmetrie riscontrate in presenza di sviluppo tipico/atipico, individuando linee di demarcazione utili alla pratica clinica. Inoltre, presentiamo importanti modifiche apportate al test della Preferenza elaborato da Novogrodsky e Friedmann (2006) per la produzione elicitata di frasi relative nell'ebraico, e successivamente adattato per il suo utilizzo in vari studi sull'italiano (Utzeri, 2006; 2007; Volpato, 2010; Contemori, 2011; Guasti et al., 2012), nonché nel presente studio. In questo modo, ci inseriamo nell'acceso dibattito sull'acquisizione delle frasi relative fornendo dati importanti sulle differenze riscontrabili in acquisizione in presenza di sviluppo tipico o atipico. Diversamente dagli studi sopra citati, abbiamo riscontrato e analizzato delle asimmetrie fra relative con gap e relative resuntive, riguardanti la natura della testa (quello/DP lessicale) e la posizione dei soggetti (preverbali/postverbali); inoltre, questo è il primo studio sull’Italiano che presenta dati sulla natura della testa relativa in bambini normodotati/con dislessia, individuando differenze nella produzione fra i vari gruppi di età.	it_IT
dc.language.iso	eng	it_IT
dc.publisher	Università Ca' Foscari Venezia	it
dc.rights	© Pivi Margherita, 2014	it_IT
dc.subject	Relative clauses	it_IT
dc.subject	Acquisition	it_IT
dc.subject	Gap	it_IT
dc.subject	Resumptive	it_IT
dc.subject	Dyslexia	it_IT
dc.subject	Relative head	it_IT
dc.subject	Subjects	it_IT
dc.title	On the acquisition of Italian restrictive relative clauses in typical and atypical development	it_IT
dc.type	Doctoral Thesis	en
dc.degree.name	Scienze del linguaggio	it_IT
dc.degree.level	Dottorato di ricerca	it
dc.degree.grantor	Scuola di dottorato in Scienze del linguaggio, della cognizione e della formazione	it_IT
dc.description.academicyear	2014	it_IT
dc.description.cycle	26	it_IT
dc.degree.coordinator	Giorgi, Alessandra
dc.location.shelfmark	D001365	it
dc.location	Venezia, Archivio Università Ca' Foscari, Tesi Dottorato	it
dc.rights.accessrights	openAccess	it_IT
dc.thesis.matricno	955863	it_IT
dc.format.pagenumber	183 p. : ill.	it_IT
dc.subject.miur	L-LIN/01 GLOTTOLOGIA E LINGUISTICA	it_IT
dc.description.tableofcontent	TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 5 A pilot experiment on Italian acquisition: a set of elicited production tasks on different syntactic structures 5 CHAPTER I 8 I.I Why the elicited production task 8 I.II. Why the repetition task 11 I.III Syntactic interpretations of restrictive relative clauses 14 I.III.I The matching and head raising analysis 14 I.III.II The pro-drop parameter 16 I.IV The debate on the acquisition of restrictive relative clauses in typically and atypically developing children 18 I.IV.I The comprehension of subject and object relative clauses in typical and atypical development across different languages 18 I.IV.II The production of subject and object relative clauses in typical development across different languages 23 I.IV.III The production of subject and object relative clauses in atypical development across different languages 30 I.IV.IV The use of resumptive pronouns in typical development 37 I.IV.V The use of resumptive pronouns in atypical development 41 I.IV.VI Different accounts for the use of resumptive pronouns in typical and atypical development 43 I.V Why do children avoid object relative clauses? Different accounts for the same linguistic phenomenon 47 I.V.I De Vincenzi’s (1991) Minimal Chain Principle and Friedmann, Belletti and Rizzi’s (2009) Relativized Minimality 47 I.V.II Collins’(2005) approach to the passive construction 48 CHAPTER II 52 Language acquisition in children affected by Developmental Dyslexia 52 CHAPTER III 58 THE EXPERIMENT 58 III. I The elicitation task 58 III.I.I Participants 58 III.I.II Materials and method 59 III.I.III Coding 66 III.II The repetition task 72 III.II.I Participants 72 III.II.II Materials and method 72 III.II.III Coding 74 CHAPTER IV 80 RESULTS 80 IV. I The elicitation task 80 IV.I.I Elicited production of SRs in typical and atypical development 80 IV.I.II The status of the head in subject relative clauses in typical and atypical development 85 IV.I.III Elicited production of ORs in typical development and controls 87 IV.I.IV The status of the head in gap and resumptive ORs in typical development 93 IV.I.V Distribution of subjects in gap and resumptive ORs in typical development 95 IV.I.VI Production of different types of passive object relatives (PORs) in typical development and controls 107 IV.I.VII Elicited production of object relative clauses in atypical development 110 IV.I.VIII The status of the head and the use of null subjects in gap and resumptive ORs in atypical development 112 IV.I.IX The distribution of subjects in gap and resumptive ORs in atypical development 113 IV.I.X Production of different types of PORs in atypical development 115 IV.II The repetition task 116 IV.II.I Results of the typically developing children and controls 116 IV.II.II Results of the atypically developing children 124 CHAPTER V 129 DISCUSSION 129 V.I Aims of our study and comparison with previous literature 129 V.II The subject/object asymmetry in ORs production 133 V.III Answer typologies when ORs were targeted 136 V.IV Resumptive relative clauses in typical and atypical development 137 V.V Syntactic asymmetries between gap and resumptive object relative clauses 138 V.V.I Light head vs. DP head in gap and resumptive ORs 138 V.V.II Null vs. DP subjects in gap and resumptive ORs 140 V.V.III Null subjects in gap/resumptive ORs 144 V.VI Asymmetries in the RCs acquisition of typical and atypical development 147 V.VII The repetition task in typical and atypical development 152 V.VII.I The repetition task in typical development 152 V.VII.II The repetition task in atypical development 154 CHAPTER VI 158 CONCLUSIONS 158 REFERENCES 164 Estratto per riassunto della tesi di dottorato 182 Abstract 183	it_IT
dc.identifier.bibliographiccitation	Pivi, M. (2014), On the acquisition of Italian restrictive relative clauses in typical and atypical development, Ph.D dissertation, Ca' Foscari University of Venice	it_IT