This paper links experimental psycholinguistics and theoretical syntax in the study of subject--verb agreement. Three experiments of elicited spoken production making use of specific characteristics of Italian and French are presented. They manipulate and examine its impact on the occurrence of "attraction" errors (i.e. incorrect agreement with a…

In this article, the author concludes a three-part series in which she analyzes verb complements in German and Italian. Parts 1 and 2 of the series appear in volume 18, numbers 2 and 3, respectively. (CFM)

This paper reports on a study on the relationship between cognitive task complexity and linguistic performance in L2 writing. In the study, two models proposed to explain the influence of cognitive task complexity on linguistic performance in L2 are tested and compared: Skehan and Foster's Limited Attentional Capacity Model (Skehan, 1998; Skehan…

Reviews three Italian-French dictionaries recently published in Italy comparing them with an older one. States that all three mark a definite progress compared to the latter, for the variety and abundance of examples and the coverage of phraseology, but finds them lacking in the areas of syntactic and semantic information. (MES)

Briefly discusses the concepts of "subject,""complement,""transitivity," and "intransitivity," contrasts the classes of complements in German and Italian based on identical criteria of classification, justifies such a classification for complements, and suggests didactic implications for the theory of…

We respond to critical comments and consider alternative statistical and syntactic analyses of our target paper which analyzed comprehension scores of Broca's aphasic patients from multiple sentence types in many languages, and showed that Movement but not Complexity or Mood are factors in the receptive deficit of these patients. Specifically, we…

Discusses the syntactic differences in expressing wishes or desires in Italian and Russian. (CFM)

Considers the behavior of certain classes of personal pronouns which have come to be known as clitics, covering the categories of clitic pronouns as special elements, a framework for clitics, stressed clitics, clitic doubling, Piedmontese clitic inversion, subject clitics, clitic clustering, clitic movement, and causative and perception verbs. (CB)

Second part of a continuing series on aspects of grammar in second-language learning. (DS)

Discusses recent analyses of the adjective in Italian and stresses the importance of the position of the Italian adjective for second language learners of Italian and for Italians learning foreign languages. (CFM)

In this article the linguistic features of three Italian Sign Language (Lingua Italiana dei Segni, or LIS) registers are analyzed focusing on iconic phenomena. Previous treatments of iconicity and motivation in spoken and signed language are discussed. Iconicity is defined as a regular mapping between expressive form and meaning that can be active…

Special issue on French dialects. (RL)