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Dissociation cliticsdeterminers in a group of Italian SLI children

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Title: Dissociation cliticsdeterminers in a group of Italian SLI children


1
Dissociation clitics-determiners in a group of
Italian SLI children
  • An elicited production experiment

2
Introduction
  • Specific Language Impairment is a developmental
    pathology that seems to selectively affect
    language abilities.
  • Roughly 5 of population below 6-7 years of age
    is affected.
  • It is more common in males than in females.
  • It shows a genetic bias.

3
Criteria for inclusion and exclusion
  • Non verbal IQ over 85 (Verbal IQ NV IQ-20)
  • At least 1.25 SD less than the age-matched
    controls in standard language tests (TROG, PFLI,
    TCGB, BNT, PEABODY).
  • Absence of relational problems.
  • Absence of neurological damages/malformations.
  • Absence of hearing impairment/loss (reiterated
    Otitis Media).
  • Absence of vocal tract malformations.

4
SLI general profile
  • Common Features across languages
  • Late talkers
  • Comprehension gt Production
  • Lexicon gt Syntax
  • Omissions gt Substitutions

5
SLI affects
  • Specifically language abilities (van der Lely,
    Wexler, Clahsen, Davies)
  • Auditory/phonological abilities (Tallal, Bishop,
    Gathercole)
  • General cognitive abilities (Kail, Locke)
  • General processing abilities, expecially of brief
    elements (Leonard) the surface hypothesis

6
The Surface Hypothesis
  • Leonard et al. (1989,1992,1998,2000) acustic
    features of linguistic elements make some
    grammatical elements particularly problematic in
    SLI.
  • Equally non salient brief elements are
    predicted to be equally easy to omit.
  • The Surface Hypothesis is assumed to hold in
    normal language development as well.

7
Predictions of the Surface Hypothesis
  • The Surface Hypothesis can be easily tested in
    Italian (and in French).
  • In these languages, definite determiners and
    clitics are predicted to be equally absent from
    SLI productions, because that they are brief in
    duration and phonetically identical
  • La bambina, la vedo / Lo squalo, lo
    mangio
  • The girl her I see / The shark him
    I eat
  • Determiners and clitics can not stand on their
    own, nor can they be conjoined.
  • Determiners precede the noun, clitics precede the
    finite verb.
  • Definite determiners encode specificity, clitics
    do too but..
  • Determiners are always present, clitics are not
    (pronouns, NPs).
  • Clitics have the same interpretation of strong
    pronouns (arguments).

8
Determiners and clitics inprevious studies
Italian
  • OMISSIONS
  • Leonard et al.(1992) 15 SLI children (4-6 yrs
    old). (Elicited Production data)
  • Bottari et al. (1998) 11 SLI children (M 63)
    (Spontaneous Production data)

9
Determiners and clitics in previous studies
French
  • Hamann et al. (1996) 2 SLI children with
    opposite profiles.
  • -Rafaelle non finite main verbs (RI)
  • clitic omissions
  • - determiner omissions
  • -Loris few RI
  • - clitic omissions
  • determiner omissions
  • Result determiners and clitics do not behave
    alike in pathology. Clitic omissions correlate
    with problems within the verbal domain

10
French, again
  • Jakubowicz et al.(1998) 13 French SLI (M811).
  • Determiners (90)gtSubject Clitics
    (73)gtReflexives (59)gtObject Clitics (26)
  • Leonards answer in French the determiner, even
    if phonologically weak, is semantically salient
    because it carries gender information.
  • If carrying (grammatical) gender information
    makes an element more salient, then the clitic in
    Italian should be more salient (and hence better
    preserved)

11
My experiment
  • SLI 4 subjects, 4 males (M 97)
  • 3 control groups (age, vocaboulary, syntax)
  • 10 obligatory contexts per morpheme
  • LA, LO determiners (NP is both SUB and OBJ
    position)
  • LA, LO accusative clitics (all present tense
    contexts)
  • SI reflexive clitic

12
SLI
13
Age and vocaboulary controls
14
Syntactic controls
15
Comparison
  • WITHIN SLI
  • - cliticsdeterminers is significant. Clitics
    are omitted more frequently.
  • pronominalreflexive is not significant. Both
    omitted.
  • SLI 9-6 CONTROLS
  • presenceomission of clitics is significant. SLI
    omit clitics.
  • presenceomission of determiners is not. SLI do
    not omit them.
  • SLI 4 CONTROLS
  • presenceomission of pronominal clitics and
    determiners is not significant. Both groups omit
    pronominal clitics. Both groups do not omit
    determiners.
  • presenceomission of reflexive clitics is
    significant. SLI omit the reflexive, ND do not.

16
Intermediate summary
  • Italian SLI in production there is a
    dissociation between clitics and determiners.
    Determiners are better preserved. (contra
    Leonard, ? Bottari)
  • SLI behave like ND children for what concerns
    pronominal clitics but not for reflexive clitic.
  • Italian SLI are different from French SLI
    (Jakubowicz reflexivegtpronominal)
  • - Difference in design/material?
  • - Difference in codification?

17
Codification
  • OBJ Que fait Kiki à Nounours? I _ passe
    le mouchoir
  • What does Kiki to Nounours ? He passes
    the handkerchief
  • Jakubowicz omission of object clitic
  • Present Experiment not coded
  • It is a DATIVE clitic OMISSION (le/ le in French
    la/le lo/gli in Italian)
  • REFL Que fait Kiki ? e _ lave un mai
  • What does Kiki do? she
    washes a hand
  • Jakubowicz Non Target Correct
  • Present Experiment Omission of a reflexive.
  • It is REFLEXIVE OMISSION, but DATIVE (si/si).
  • Back to the experiment DATIVE-ACCUSATIVE

18
Examples
  • OBJ Cosa fa il cane al gatto?
  • What does the dog do to the cat?
  • Target Lo gratta
    SLI gli toglie le pulci
  • Him scratches
    to him takes away fleas
  • REFLCosa fa Cenerentola?
  • What does Cinderella do?
  • Target Si pettina
    SLI si pettina i capelli
  • herself brushes
    to herself brushes the hair

19
SLI
20
A closer look
21
To sum up
  • Determiners and Clitics are DIFFERENT (Bottari et
    al, Hamann et al, Jakubowitz, present study)
  • French SLI reflexive gt pronominal
  • Italian SLI reflexive gt pronominal gtdative
  • ND controls (French and Italian) reflexive gt
    pronominal

22
Some Speculations
  • SLI have problems with operation Move a (as
    proposed by van der Lely 1998,2002 Davies,
    2004). This would account for the difference
    clitics-determiners
  • If what is problematic is movement, then why
    dont we ever find the clitic after the verb?
    Vedolo (see him) is unattested
  • Along the lines of Davies (2004) and van der Lely
    (2005) I take movement to be optional in SLI
    grammars.
  • Along the lines of Sportiche (1992), I assume
    that the clitic is the head of CliticVoiceP. The
    complement of the verb is pro. pro and the clitic
    have to be in a Spec-Head relation (Clitic
    Criterion, EPP).
  • Given that movement is optional, pro does not
    always get to Spec, CLP. When this happens,the
    whole projection is eliminated and we get
    omission.
  • Optionality might be at work even in the grammars
    of ND children.

23
  • Special thanks to
  • Giuseppe Cossu
  • Marcel den Dikken
  • Alexia Ioannidou
  • Miho Nagai
  • Luigi Rizzi
  • Ji Shim Young
  • Erin Quirk
  • The kids AL,DC,LM,TM
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