Word order, referential expression, and case cues to the acquisition of transitive sentences in Italian.
In Study 1 we analyzed Italian child-directed-speech (CDS) and selected the three most frequent active transitive sentence frames used with overt subjects. In Study 2 we experimentally investigated how Italian-speaking children aged 2;6, 3;6, and 4;6 comprehended these orders with novel verbs when the cues of animacy, gender, and subject-verb agreement were neutralized. For each trial, children chose between two videos (e.g., horse acting on cat versus cat acting on horse), both involving the same action. The children aged 2;6 comprehended S + object-pronoun + V (soprov) significantly better than S + V + object-noun (svonoun ). We explain this in terms of cue collaboration between a low cost cue (case) and the first argument = agent cue which we found to be reliable 76% of the time. The most difficult word order for all age groups was the object-pronoun + V + S (oprovs). We ascribe this difficulty to cue conflict between the two most frequent transitive frames found in CDS, namely V + object-noun and object-pronoun + V.
School of Psychology,University of Kent,UK.
Kirsten
K
Abbot-Smith
School of Psychological Sciences,University of Manchester,UK.
Ludovica
L
Serratrice
D002648:Child; D002663:Child Language; D032882:Comprehension; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D007802:Language; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D012660:Semantics; D013060:Speech