Referential expressions in early Italian

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Referential expressions in early Italian

• Uiltjesdagen 2007
• 16th-17th April 2007
• roberta.tedeschi_at_let.uu.nl

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Plan of the talk

• Previous studies on the syntax-discourse
  interface in Italian
• New experimental study Choice of referring
  expressions in early Italian
• Conclusions

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Clitic omissions in early Italian

• (1) penchè penchè 0w ha usuato lui .
• because because has used he
• because he has used
• (Raffaello, 26.13)
• (2) poi 0w metto qua
• then put here
• then I put here (while playing with toys)
• (Diana, 111)

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Clitic omission in early Italian(Schaeffer 2000)

• Omission is optional
• Children lack the pragmatic Concept of Non-Shared
  Knowledge
• Referentiality is optionally marked in their
  grammar

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Argument realization in early Italian (Serratrice
et al. 2004)

• Null (subjects and) objects associated with
  uninformative features
• Competition between syntactic and pragmatic
  requirements

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Omission of functional categories (Avrutin 2004
2006)

• In populations with lower than normal brain
  activation (such as children) syntax is
  weakened
• Reliance on context can become a less or equally
  expensive option for encoding information

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Pilot study

• Distribution of full DPs, pronouns and omissions
  in early Italian
• Discourse cues and referring expressions
• Do children omit uninformative objects
  (clitics)?

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Discourse cues and referring expressions
(Serratrice, submitted)

• Correlation between type of question and
  childrens choice of referring expressions
• Full DP vs. pronoun/null reference

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Some hypotheses

• 1) General question no mention of the referents
  in the preceeding discourse
• Informative referential expression (DP)
• 2) Specific question antecedent introduced in
  the immediately preceeding discourse
• Less informative referential expression (clitic)

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General vs. specific question Omissions?

• General question
• A low number of omissions is expected
• Specific question
• A high number of omissions is expected

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Subjects

• Ten monolingual Italian children aged 26-58

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Procedure

• The child is asked to tell stories to a puppet by
  answering a (general/specific) question about
  each picture

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Material

• 48 pictures 32 items (16 in each condition) and
  16 fillers
• Pictures A man/woman is performing an action on
  one/two characters
• Actions performed washing, combing, touching,
  greeting
• All direct object clitics are elicited

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Results 2-year-olds
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Results 3-year-olds
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Results 5-year-olds
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Discussion I

• All children More DPs in response to a general
  question than in response to a specific question

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Discussion II

• 2 and 3-year-olds clitics in response to general
  questions
• 5-year-olds no clitics in response to general
  questions

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Discussion III

• 3-year-olds more omissions in response to a
  specific question than in response to a general
  question

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Referential expressions in early Italian

• Even the 2 and 3-year olds were sensitive to
  question type in their choice of referring
  expressions
• But
• They did not perform adult-like
• Why?

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References

• Avrutin, S. (2006). Weak syntax. In Y. Grodzinsky
  and L. Amunds (eds.), Brocas Region. Oxford.
• Avrutin, S. (2004). Optionality in child and
  aphasic speech. In Lingue e linguaggio 1,
  pp.67-89.
• Schaeffer, J. (2000). The acquisition of direct
  object scrambling and clitic placement.
  Amsterdam/Philadelphia. John Benjamins.
• Serratrice, L. (submitted). The role of
  perceptual and discourse cues in the choice of
  referential expressions in English pre-schoolers
  and school-age children
• Serratrice, L., A. Sorace and S. Paoli (2004).
  Crosslinguistic influence at the
  syntax-pragmatics interface Subjects and objects
  in English-Italian bilingual and monolingual
  acquisition. Bilingualism and Cognition 7 (3),
  pp.183-205.

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THANK YOU!