A major contribution to the study of language acquisition and language development inspired by theoretical linguistics has been made by research on the acquisition of Italian syntax. This book offers an updated overview of results from theory-driven experimental and corpus-based research on the acquisition of Italian in different modes (monolingual, early and late L2, SLI, etc.), as well as exploring possible developments for future research. The book focuses on experimental studies which address research questions generated by linguistic theory, providing a detailed illustration of the fruitf.

• The Acquisition of Italian
• Editorial page
• Title page
• LCC data
• Table of contents
• Aknowledgements
• Introduction
  • The different modes of acquisition
  • Some general assumptions of linguistic analysis
• The acquisition of verb inflections and clause structure
  • 1.1 Introduction
  • 1.2 Acquisition of verbal tenses
  • 1.3 Acquisition of present tense inflections
  • 1.4 The process of subject-verb agreement
  • 1.5 Acquisition of the finite versus infinitive verb distinction
  • 1.6 Why aren’t there any root infinitives in early Italian?
  • 1.7 Imperatives as the Italian analogue of root infinitives
  • 1.8 Copula
    • 1.8.1 Descriptive facts and generalizations
    • 1.8.2 An account of the declarative versus wh-question asymmetry in copula omission
    • 1.8.3 The copula in negative contexts
  • 1.9 Compound tenses and optional past participles
  • 1.10 Past participles: Verbal or adjectival nature?
  • 1.11 Regular and irregular past participles and past definite
  • 1.12 The ‘imperfetto’
  • 1.13 Acquisition of verb inflections in children with SLI and Developmental Dyslexia
  • Summary and questions for future research
• The acquisition of articles and aspects of nominal inflection
  • 2.1 Introduction
  • 2.2 The L1 acquisition of articles
  • 2.3 Article use in Italian keeping an eye on the crosslinguistic dimension
  • 2.4 Article omission and phonological constraints
  • 2.5 Article omission and the syntactic context: The subject-object asymmetry in Italian
  • 2.6 An attempt towards a multi-facet explanation
  • 2.7 Article omission in non-initial positions: Complement of prepositions
  • 2.8 Acquisition of articles in the bilingual children and adult L2 learners
  • 2.9 Article omission in children with Specific Language Impairment
  • 2.10 The acquisition of nominal inflection in children with typical development and in children with SLI
  • 2.11 Morphological derivation: The diminutive
  • Summary and questions for future research
• The acquisition of pronominal clitics
  • 3.1 Introduction
  • 3.2 Clitics in L1 Italian
    • 3.2.1 Clitic omission in early Italian productions
    • 3.2.2 Is the unexpressed object an omitted clitic or a null-object?
    • 3.2.3 Italian clitics and past participle agreement
  • 3.3 Clitics in L2: Bilingual/Child L2 Italian and Adult L2 Italian
  • 3.4 Italian clitics in atypical development
    • 3.4.1 Clitics in SLI; Clitics as markers of language impairment
    • 3.4.2 Clitics in children with cochlear implant
    • 3.4.3 Clitics in children with Developmental Dyslexia
  • 3.5 The comprehension of object clitics by monolingual children acquiring Italian
  • Summary and questions for future research
• The acquisition of relative clauses
  • 5.1 Introduction
  • 5.2 Production
    • 5.2.1 The production of subject and object relatives in typically developing children
    • 5.2.2 The production of Passive Object Relatives in children
    • 5.2.3 The production of Passive Object Relatives in adults in comparison with children of different ages
    • 5.2.4 The position and nature of the subject in the object relatives produced by children
  • 5.3 The comprehension of subject and object relatives in typically developing children
    • 5.3.1 Intervention and feature mismatch in the comprehension of object relatives
      • 5.3.1.1 The comprehension of object relative and number mismatch
      • 5.3.1.2 The comprehension of object relatives and gender mismatch
  • 5.4 Toward interpreting children’s development: Intervention and the locality of syntactic dependencies
    • 5.4.1 Feature mismatch and the grammatical status of morphosyntactic features
    • 5.4.2 Number feature and pronouns as relative heads or subjects: Comprehension and production
    • 5.4.3 Passive and intervention: PORs in elicited production
  • 5.5 The acquisition of Subject and Object relatives in special circumstances: In children with SLI, with developmental dyslexia, in autistic children, in hearing impaired children, in adult L2 acquisition
  • Summary and questions for future research
• The acquisition of Wh-questions
  • 6.1 Introduction
  • 6.2 The L1 acquisition of wh-questions
  • 6.3 Comprehension of subject and object wh-questions
  • 6.4 Production of subject and object questions with reversible verbs
  • 6.5 Some reflections of comprehension and production of Italian wh-questions in a cross-linguistic perspective
  • 6.6 Why are Italian wh-questions hard?
  • 6.7 How many interference processes?
  • 6.8 Wh-questions in children with SLI or Developmental Dyslexia
  • Summary and questions for future research
• The acquisition of the syntax and interpretation of subjects
  • 7.1 Introduction
  • 7.2 Null and overt subjects in typically developing children
    • 7.2.1 More on post-verbal subjects in typically developing children according to verb classes and definiteness
  • 7.3 Subjects in different populations
    • 7.3.1 Considerations on null subjects in SLI
    • 7.3.2 Post-verbal and null subjects in (adult) L2
      • 7.3.2.1 Post-verbal new information subjects
        • 7.3.2.1.1 Post-verbal subjects with unaccusatives. Some spontaneous productions of the same group of near native speakers were tested in Belletti Bennati Sorace (2007). In the relevant experimental task the L2 near natives had to describe a silent movie (
      • 7.3.2.2 Null and overt pronominal subjects in (adult) L2 with reference to attrition
    • 7.3.3 Overt and null subjects in bilinguals
  • Summary and questions for future research
• Conclusion
  • The contribution of studies on the acquisition of Italian
• References
• Index