Through two elicited production experiments we investigated how preschool Italian-speaking children access the left periphery of the clause with respect to topics in Clitic Left Dislocation (ClLD) structures. Since the discourse conditions of the experiments are felicitous for the production of passives as well, we also investigated children's…

This article explores the second language acquisition of motion events, with particular regard to cross-linguistic influence between first and second languages. Oral narratives in Spanish as a second language by native speakers of French, German and Italian are compared, together with narratives by native Spanish speakers. Previous analysis on the…

Negative sentences with epistemic modals (e.g., John "might" not come/John "can" not come) contain two logical operators, negation and the modal, which yields a potential semantic ambiguity depending on scope assignment. The two possible readings are in a subset/superset relation, such that the strong reading ("can…

We investigated the second language (L2) acquisition of pragmatic categories that are not as consistently and frequently encoded in the L2 than in the first language (L1). Experiment 1 showed that Italian speakers linguistically highlighted affirmative polarity contrast (e.g. "The child ate the candies" following after "The child…

The Aspect Hypothesis assumes that--in early interlanguages--the perfective past spreads from telic to atelic verbs because events occurring in the past are easier to be associated with predicates having an inherent endpoint in their lexico-conceptual representation. In this study it is questioned whether for initial L2ers knowing the general…

Analysis of two Restructuring constructions in Italian, "equi" and "raising" structures, suggests that while lexical functional grammar (LFG) does not offer the kind of analysis previously used on this kind of structure, it does offer an insightful and interesting analysis of Restructuring in Italian. This approach treats…

Examines the dual mechanism hypothesis, which argues that the apparent contrast, in English inflectional morphology, between a rule-based default procedure, generating regular past-tense forms, and listed irregular forms stored in an associative net, reflects universal constraints on the properties of possible morphological systems. The study…

This study assesses children's understanding of the Italian modal verbs "dovere" (must) and "potere" (may) in their dual function of qualification of the speaker's beliefs (epistemic modality) and behaviour regulation (deontic modality). 192 children and 60 adults participated in the experiment. Children aged 3;0 to 9;2 were presented with two…

Previous theory concerning the variable behavior verbs in unaccusative/unergative alternation in Dutch, Hebrew, and Italian, which concludes that the unergative/unaccusative distinction is not syntactic but aspectual/semantic, is challenged. Discrepancies and inconsistencies are found in the grammatical functions of aspectual functional…

Defines English phrasal verbs (EPVs) and analyzes Italian students problems when studying them. Through contrastive analysis of English and Italian syntax and study of student errors, important insights are offered. (over 100 references) (LET)

The effect of formal instruction in English as a Second Language (ESL) on the pidginized speech of a second language learner was studied. The subject was a 76-year-old Italian woman residing in the United States since the age of 37. Four one-hour tapes were made of the subject's speech in April of 1976, and during the last five months of a…

Although the Italian system of address pronouns is relatively complex, scant attention is paid to the issue in L2 manuals designed for English-speaking learners of Italian. After showing that Italian L2 manuals are not necessarily accurate in the limited detail they provide, we examine specifically the frequent claim that so-called informal…

Student papers presented at a sociolinguistics conference include: "La variation phonologique [d'une voyelle] a Hull"; "La force illocutoire des pronoms personnels 'je' et 'tu' en tant qu'insignes des places d'ou parlent les femmes et les hommes"; "L'emploi des modes indicatif et subjonctif dans le francais parle de la…

A yearly cross-section of current work in Edinburgh University's Department of Applied Linguistics is offered with the aim of eliciting reactions and criticism. Papers in this compilation are: "Discursive Aspects of Metafiction: A Neo-Oral Aura?"; "The Reaction of Learners to Tape-Based Listening Comprehension Materials in French,…

Papers include: "Length and Structure Effects in Syntactic Processing"; Nantong Tone Sandhi and Tonal Feature Geometry"; "Event Reference and Property Theory"; "Function-Argument Structure, Category Raising and Bracketing Paradoxes"; "At the Phonetics-Phonology Interface: (Re)Syllabification and English Stop…