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In this paper, we critically discuss the impact of policy documents on the construction of national narratives on the provision of support for cultural-linguistic diversity in education systems in two European countries. The analysis focuses upon a selection of national policy documents that deal with the planning and provision of HLE since the 1990s. We take critical pedagogy and sociomateriality as theoretical lenses to investigate educational policies on HLE. Thus, this study critically traces the ways in which language ideologies are enmeshed with legislative, political and educational discourses by following an inductive and retroductive process, wherein key-concepts, themes and critical configurations of HLE are mapped, compared, re-assembled and discussed in terms of a complex system. The analysis shows that the (non-)provision of HLE shapes the educational space and the value references and world views that prevail and are (re)produced in it. Emerging deficit perspectives, linguistic assimilation and marginalisation processes limit the path towards more inclusive and equitable educational institutions and practices.

Many studies have explored how Language-Minority Bilingual Children (LMBC) read and comprehend, while the way they learn to spell and write has received less attention. This study aimed to assess a comprehensive profile of spelling and writing skills in LMBC, comparing performances of 4th and 5th grade bilingual (n = 74) and monolingual (n = 131) children in word and nonword reading and multilevel spelling and writing tasks (word, nonword and passage dictation, and written narrative production). Furthermore, we explored the role of linguistic and cognitive predictors (nonverbal Intellectual Quotient, verbal knowledge, morphosyntactic comprehension, nonword repetition) in spelling and writing outcomes. Our findings showed that, overall, LMBC did not reach a monolingual-like proficiency in spelling by the end of primary school, while they were similar to monolinguals in reading tasks and were able to produce written narratives with adequate macrostructure, syntactic complexity, and lexical variety. Moreover, morphosyntactic comprehension predicted spelling in both groups. Nonverbal intelligence and verbal knowledge predicted spelling skills only for the bilingual group. With regards to writing skills, morphosyntactic comprehension emerged as a predictor exclusively in the bilingual group. These results are discussed with reference to educational and clinical implications.

Juliane House has split translation into "overt" and "covert" types. Translation has been classified by Lawrence Venuti into "domestication" and "foreignization". This research attempted to compare the translation typologies rendered by House and Venuti. House' and Venuti's translation typologies are similar in 8 points and differ in 4 ones. Overt translation corresponds to foreignization and covert translation to domestication. Dichotomy is neither superior nor inferior to the others.

This paper reports on a research project in Responsible Tourism (Prayag, Hosany, & Odeh, 2013) carried out at the University of Salento in collaboration with the local administrations of some seaside resorts in Southern Italy affected by migrants' massive arrivals. This project, which involves tourists, migrants, university students in intercultural mediation and local communities, applies a model of Experiential-Linguistics (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999) to a multimodal Ethnopoetic analysis (Hymes, 2003; Kress, 2009) of (a) non-Western migrants' traumatic accounts of journeys across the sea, reported in their own ELF variations (Guido, 2008, 2018), (b) Western epic narratives of Mediterranean dramatic voyages rendered from Ancient Greek and Latin into modern ELF variations, and (c) multimodal representations of the ethnopoetic rhythms of such ancient and modern sea-journey narratives through the production of a promotional video. The aim is to highlight the experiential common roots shared by classical-epic and contemporary migration narratives. Three main research phases will be explored, which are characterised by pedagogical activities meant to foster an active, multicultural community integration, as well as a view of tourism as an inclusive social experience.

The present paper investigates the acquisition of L3 Polish by L1 Italian university students of L2 Russian. The participants had never studied the L3 prior to the experiment, but took a meta-linguistically explicit course in Slavic Linguistics focussing on Polish/Russian contrastive grammar. The main research question is whether or not the similarity of the target structure in the two languages allows learners to transfer the L2 processing mechanisms to the L3. The conflicting predictions of the FT/FA hypothesis and of the DMTH are compared. The results show that alongside typical developmental errors, clear instances of L2 transfer can be identified. Although transfer does not always produce target-like results, it arguably constitutes evidence of the processing of a target structure which is not normally accessible in the early stages of acquisition.

This paper, after shortly introducing "Folk Linguistics" by defining its domain of competence [cf. Preston, Dennis R., ed. 1999. "Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology." Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Niedzielski, Nancy A., and Dennis R. Preston. 2003. "Folk Linguistics." Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter], attempts to draw an outline of the advantages that can be derived from its application to language teaching education from several viewpoints. In order to do so, similarly to what happens with sociolinguistics, we will at first suggest introducing a distinction between micro-language teaching studies and "macro"-language teaching studies. The former typology of studies is often the direct consequence of the latter, since it lays its foundations and indicates its lines and directions of development. This distinction serves to better define the relation between "Folk Linguistics" and language teaching education, as language attitudes, being a fundamental component of speakers' language identity [Berruto, Gaetano. 2005. "Fondamenti di sociolinguistica." Roma-Bari: Laterza] and their will and willingness to learn a new language, have an immediate and essential impact especially on the "macro" perspective. Different possible areas of investigation will then be singled out and described in detail, with reference to the advantages of their application in language teaching education planning and practice. Finally, a case study relating to an Italian Secondary School will be illustrated.

The present study focussed on a specific type of rare genetic condition: chromosome 14 deletions. Children with this genetic condition often show developmental delays and brain and neurological problems, although the type and severity of symptoms varies depending on the size and location of the deleted genetic material. The specific aim of the present study was to describe the developmental trajectories of language skills in a group of children with linear 14q deletions. Four children with an interstitial deletion of the long arm of chromosome 14 were followed for 1 year. Data collected from psychomotor and linguistic assessments highlight a large individual variability. Considering the children's genetic and clinical conditions, findings revealed that the size of the deleted area is not related to outcome. However, the developmental trajectories of language development are deeply influenced by the presence of clinical conditions, such as autism spectrum disorders. (Contains 2 tables and 5 figures.)

This study looks at the real and perceived effects of inter-candidate variation in linguistic ability during pair-tested oral examinations in a southern Italian context. Pair testing has not been taken up in schools and universities in southern Italy despite its wide use in international testing systems. Colleagues and prospective candidates often report to teachers their belief that test results can be adversely or positively affected by candidate pairing. To investigate the existence and validity of these beliefs, a series of tests was devised consisting of paired oral tests and pre- and post-test questionnaires. It was found that while the great majority of candidates believed that their test scores could be, and in many cases had been, affected by their candidate pairing, no evidence came to light to support these beliefs. In fact the linguistic ability of a candidate's partner appeared to have little or no effect on his or her performance.

This article presents a study on the linguistic strategies used for projecting specific personas in the academic writing of Italian students of English. The issue of authorial stance, namely to what degree writers feel themselves to be not simply writers but also authors with the authority to say something meaningful, has been the topic of much research. A rather obvious linguistic strategy to claim authorial presence is to use first person reference and the corresponding determiners. However, not only is the I emerging from the text, by its very nature, plural, but different genres are associated with differing degrees of I-ism, and these expectations and conventions vary from culture to culture and from period to period. In the context of academic writing, the task of acquiring genre conventions that require authors to position themselves in the text in a certain way, is particularly difficult for L2 students because, being, at the same time, strongly under the influence of their own culture, both genre and cultural conventions might be operating simultaneously. In this paper I explore rhetorical positioning in the academic writing of Italian students of English by delving into the use and function of the first person pronouns "I," "we," "me," and "us" and their respective determiners. The issue the study investigates is how rhetorical positioning through the use of personal pronouns contribute to project an identity in the practice of the academic writing of Italian students of English. (Contains 4 tables.)

The objective of this research is to provide an improved automated computational tool to study aphasic production. Using the speech production of Italian aphasic patients, the present study demonstrates the possibility of applying an integrated algorithm to automatically assess and generate error patterns typical of aphasic speech. Philological studies and aphasia studies share one common point: errors (or variants) are informative, and the intention of the authors (in the case of philology) or of the patients (in the case of aphasiology) is to be established. For this precise reason, the present study adapts a tool, originally used in computational philology for the alignment of textual variants (Boschetti, 2007, 2008), and puts it to use for assessing aphasic patient's speech error patterns. As is demonstrated, this tool is effective and analytical. The authors expect this to be beneficial for the use of analysing aphasic production in both clinical and academic settings. (Contains 12 tables.)

Brain plasticity was investigated in 14 Italian children affected by developmental dyslexia after 6 months of phonological training. The means used to measure language reorganization was the recognition potential, an early wave, also called N150, elicited by automatic word recognition. This component peaks over the left temporo-occipital cortex and its amplitude depends on linguistic expertise. N150 elicited by written words was measured both in dyslexic children before and after training and in a sample of matched normal readers during phonological, semantic and orthographic tasks. After training, dyslexic children increased their reading speed. Normal readers showed a typical left posterior N150, whereas in dyslexic children it was equally distributed across hemispheres before and shifted to left posterior sites after training. In addition, dyslexics' left posterior N150 asymmetry on the phonological task after training was significantly correlated with reading speed improvement, that is, those children who showed the greatest left shift in phonological N150 also had the greatest reading speed improvement. Source localization of the N150 component was made with both the Standard Low Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography software and the classical dipole analysis method termed Brain Electrical Source Analysis. The N150 generator lies in the left occipito-temporal cortex (Brodmann areas 39, 37 and 19) in good readers, but in right homologous areas in dyslexic children before training. After the treatment, the dyslexics' main N150 generator shifted to the left occipito-inferotemporal cortex (namely Brodmann areas 37 and 19) with small differences between tasks. The two source location methods provided consistent, converging solutions. Results add to the current literature on the phonological hypothesis of dyslexia by showing hemispheric reorganization of linguistic networks at the level of early word recognition potential. Furthermore, the present work is the first to investigate brain reorganization in a regular/transparent language like Italian.

The aims of this study were to investigate whether specific linguistic difficulties in preterm children persist at eight years and to examine the interrelationships between language and literacy in this population, compared with a control group of full-term children. Sixty-eight monolingual Italian preterms and 26 chronologically matched controls were recruited. Language (grammar comprehension, lexical production and phonological awareness), literacy (reading comprehension, reading and writing) and general cognitive development were investigated. Results showed no general delay in preterms, but slight difficulties in specific linguistic abilities (grammar, lexicon, phoneme synthesis and deletion of the first syllable), more difficulties in literacy (speed in reading and accuracy in writing) and certain correlations among competencies turning out to be different from the control group. In conclusion, our study established that a partially atypical trajectory emerged in preterms, showing specific long-term effects of preterm birth on language and literacy development.

In the last few decades, investigations into the linguistic landscape (LL) have sought to analyse written language practices as they are observable in public space. Whilst the LL analysis of language choice in given contexts has opened a host of possibilities for scientific enquiry in the field, the methodologies employed in the collection and categorisation of written signs is still controversial. This paper addresses a specific aspect of the question by discussing brand names in the urban space and seeking to identify a framework for a linguistic classification of brand names. The authors indicate a way forward for future research that draws upon work undertaken in disciplines such as marketing and social psychology, emphasising that brand names should not be excluded from the analysis of the LL as this would amount to denying the linguistic impact of trademarks on individuals and groups in our globalised world. (Contains 2 notes.)

Antonio Gramsci and his concept of hegemony are often invoked in current debates concerning cultural imperialism, globalisation and global English. However, these debates are rarely cognizant of Gramsci's own university training in linguistics, the centrality of language to his writings on education and hegemony, or his specific engagement with language politics in his own day. By paying much greater attention to Gramsci's writings on language and education, this article attempts to lay the groundwork for an adequate approach to the current politics of global English. While Gramsci may have left formal education and his studies in linguistics at Turin University as a young man to become a full time journalist and political activist, he certainly did not "jettison" his study of language as is commonly implied. It has been widely accepted that Gramsci had an expansive conception of education which would curtail any suggestion that "education" must be limited to formal schooling or university. Likewise, this article demonstrates the importance of Gramsci's lifelong analysis of language, its role in education and the development of hegemony. It argues that Gramsci's writings on language policy in Italy, specifically "la questione della lingua" [the language question] and his concern with linguistics, are an integral part of his approach to education and hegemony.

This study aims to describe in detail the linguistic skills of a large group of SLI participants. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of age-related effects on their linguistic performance and to whether a linguistic assessment of a narrative task can capture language impairments that might not be adequately pointed out by standardized neuropsychological tests assessing linguistic functions. The narratives produced by 62 children diagnosed with SLI with mixed expressive-receptive disorders were compared to those provided by a group of 195 children with Typical Language Development matched for chronological age and level of formal education. Furthermore, an age-related groups' performance analysis has been performed in order to determine possible correlations between patients' ages and types of language impairment. The SLI participants produced an amount of words comparable to that produced by the control group, albeit in a simpler fashion, as their narratives were teeming with omissions and/or substitutions of bound and free morphemes. These data suggest that the domains of morphosyntax and syntax were particularly impaired. (Contains 7 tables.)

This study aimed to investigate early lexical and grammatical development and their relations in a sample of very immature healthy preterms, in order to assess whether their linguistic development was typical, at risk or atypical. The effects of biological factors and parental level of education on preterms' linguistic development were also investigated. Seventy-three Italian preterms and 22 Italian fullterms (control sample) were assessed at 2;6 with an Italian test of repetition of sentences (TRF). Their mothers completed the Italian version of the MacArthur questionnaire (PVB). Our results showed that most of the preterm sample displayed a typical development, compared with the fullterms, with lexicon and grammar within the normal range and a normal relation between these competencies. However, preterms characterized by an extremely low birthweight (ELBW), a very low gestational age and male gender were at risk, with slight delays in the lexicon and grammar, but still retaining the normal relation between the two. (Contains 1 footnote.) [This research was supported by the University of Bologna.]

Due to the peculiar nature of news texts, the adoption of a theory of "localisation" rather than conventional translation theories accounts more easily for both the commercial nature and the global scale of news distribution. News texts are global products which are distributed through a localisation process involving not only reception by locales of a given text, but also the simultaneous production of more versions of a same news report and the production of a new target text of which translation is only a part and not the translator-journalist's goal. Such a text is tailored for "sub-locales" whose identity is political as well as linguistic. The case of the Italian press is typical, as it shows how a global news report is not only interlinguistically localised into the Italian locale, but also intralinguistically adapted to suit readers' political leanings within the same linguistic locale. (Contains 5 notes.)

This study compared multiple characteristics of girls' and boys' vocabulary in 6 different linguistic communities--1 urban and 1 rural setting in each of 3 countries. Two hundred fifty-two mothers in Argentina, Italy, and the United States completed vocabulary checklists for their 20-month-old children. Individual variability was substantial within each linguistic community. Minimal cross-linguistic differences were found in children's vocabulary size; however, differences among languages in the composition of children's vocabularies appeared possibly related to cultural valuing of different categories of words. Ecological setting differences within cultures appeared in children's vocabulary size, even when the composition of children's vocabularies was examined: Children living in urban areas were reported by their mothers to say significantly more words than children living in rural areas, particularly for Argentine and U.S. children. Girls had consistently larger vocabularies than boys. These findings are discussed in terms of contextual and child factors that together influence first language learning. (Contains 4 footnotes and 5 tables.)

This monograph provides an overview of the language situation in Italy, within the framework of language policy and language planning. It presents an account of multilingualism, linguistic diversity, social variation, educational issues and phenomena of language contact both within and outside Italy. The four main threads are (1) the current linguistic profile of Italy, (2) language spread in the past, (3) the current issues in language planning and language policy, (4) the prediction of future developments and language prospects. A number of historical factors have been elaborated to account for the highly unusual conditions of Italian multilingualism. One factor is that the so-called "dialects" of Italy are actually Romance languages and not dialects of Italian different from the standard. Another is that Italian is a far less standardised language than other Romance languages. The fact that Italian became a major European language without having had the experience of a common nation explains a wide range of issues relevant to language policy and language planning: from education to literacy. Such issues include aspects of national education and foreign language instruction, minority languages, and immigrant languages. My aim has been to provide the readers with critical guidance regarding various policy decisions. (Contains 9 tables and 9 figures.)

Many languages use vast numbers of words borrowed from English, and modified (clipped) to use the first part of the word only. The paper provides examples, mainly from Italian, examining the linguistic reasons for such clipped forms and presents several clipped Italian terms used in English, noting that the same thing can happen in reverse. (SMN)

This article considers sociocultural and linguistic aspects of children with learning disabilities in one region of Italy, noting the role of bilingualism and "standard" Italian language learning problems. The article examines legislative aspects; the roles of the school, hospitals, public services, and private institutes; and parental concerns. Specific needs are identified. (Author/DB)

Reports on a study which compared the research performance of departments in linguistics and literature from universities in the United States, the Netherlands, Italy, and Germany, using database searches to reconstruct publication lists based on analysis of citations. Data are presented on the impact of book publications and articles, as well as on the geographical range of impact. (MES)

Investigates how language is acquired by children in a lower social class environment. Subjects were two children: a boy (1 year 8 months) and a girl (1 year, 5 months) living in Italy. (MP)

Background: Nurses worldwide are acknowledged for their role in health education across various settings. However, doubts often arise regarding their competence in this domain. This study aims to validate the Nurse Health Education Competence Instrument (NHECI) linguistically and culturally in the Italian context. Methods: Following Beaton et al.'s (2000) guidelines, we conducted cross-cultural adaptation to develop the Italian version of the questionnaire. Results: The Italian version demonstrates a good internal consistency and stability, making it suitable for assessing nursing students during clinical internships and practicing nurses. The availability of Italian tools promotes healthcare research, ensuring patient-centric care. Conclusions: The validity and reliability of the Italian version of the instrument for assessing health education competencies, essential for self-assessment among health education nurses, are established. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 emergency underlined the importance of an effective public health communication to limit the spread of the outbreak. Physicians as "public experts" can play a crucial part in health risk communication, even if their role is challenged by transformations into the information system. Therefore, the major objective of this study was to investigate public perception of medical experts' opinions regarding the COVID-19 emergency. The Italian public debate involving medical experts in the Twitter sphere during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has particularly been examined. A content analysis was performed on 2,040 randomly selected tweets. The results of content analysis show that the medical experts who tend to mitigate the risk received a higher number of tweets supporting their positions when compared to the experts whose statements were aimed at intensifying the risk. Since a public expert is a communicator, but also an advisor who can affect how laypersons perceive and react to risk events, this study can provide more knowledge about the public perception of different communication strategies incorporated by medical experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selective mutism (SM) is an anxiety disorder that is characterized by a child's persistent inability to communicate verbally in some or all contexts of social life. It is often associated with other cognitive–affective disorders. Performing cognitive–behavioral assessments and psychological interventions can be challenging due to the difficulty in administering standardized neuropsychological tests and involving family and teachers in the intervention program. In a single case study, a young Filipina girl with SM underwent a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment and received multimodal therapeutic intervention between the ages of 7 and 11. The psychological intervention included cognitive–behavioral psychotherapy to improve social–cognitive skills and learning abilities, reduce anxiety, and provide speech therapy. The parents and teachers were actively involved in the therapeutic process and a underwent a psycho-education program. Following this treatment, at the age of 11, the girl started verbalizing in therapy and school contexts, although she still used non-verbal strategies. There was also a gradual improvement in her communicative–linguistic skills and school learning. In conclusion, this report emphasizes the importance of applying an integrated and multimodal intervention to treat SM in children, including psychoeducation for parents and teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociolinguistic factors such as status and prestige can significantly impact the persistence of an accent in a patient with Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS). FAS is a rare acquired syndrome that affects a speaker's accent typically caused by a stroke or trauma. In this presented FAS case study, we explore two distinct perspectives on a shift from a Sicilian to a North-East variety of Italian accent, caused by an accident trauma. Data have been collected with an ethnographic approach to explore the patient's narrative towards his 'foreign accent'. Firstly, the study analyzes the perception of native listeners through a speech sample perception test of different varieties of Italian. The listeners' responses revealed a diversified classification of the accent, highlighting the listener's crucial role in assigning the status of 'foreignness' to a particular variety. Additionally, an analysis with Praat software showed that the FAS speaker used a variety with some Sicilian and North-East traits. Secondly, the study investigated the patient's perception of their new accent through an ethnographic approach and participant observer technique. The results revealed a typology of FAS speakers that correlated with sociolinguistic factors not previously identified by research. In conclusion, this study sheds light on the complex interplay between sociolinguistic factors and FAS, demonstrating the importance of exploring FAS under various perspectives of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the gender gap in issue attention among members of parliament (MPs) by applying automated text analytic techniques to a novel data set on Italian parliamentary speeches over a remarkably long period (1948–2020). We detect a gendered specialization across issues that tends to disappear as women's shares in parliamentary groups increase. We then investigate whether women's access to previously male-owned issues brings with it a different agenda, operationalized as a different vocabulary. We detect a U-shaped pattern: language gender specificity is high when female MPs are tokens in parliamentary groups with a large preponderance of men; it decreases when their shares start increasing and grows again when they constitute a considerable minority. We argue that this pattern is consistent with the theory of tokenism, and it is produced by the interlinkage of commitment to shared norms and the distribution of "activation thresholds" among female MPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies on the acquisition of postverbal subjects (VS) in L2 Italian focus on a limited number of linguistic factors that tend to be associated with the production of VS in L1 (e.g., verb class and subject discourse status). Moreover, they analyze homogeneous groups of learners in terms of proficiency, mostly through controlled experiments. In this paper, we present a cross-sectional corpus study based on a multifactorial analysis of the L2 use of VS structures in semi-spontaneous speech. We analyze the production of VSs by learners of different levels of proficiency (A1-C2), considering linguistic factors that trigger the production of VS in L1, but have been unaccounted for in L2 studies (e.g., agentivity of the subject, syntactic configuration of the sentence, contrastive focus). We use a cumulative link mixed model to show how the features of verbs and subjects in VS structures change across proficiency levels. The results indicate learners' progressive mastery of the mechanisms of assignment of the subject function to the postverbal constituent and increasing sensitivity to contrastive focus as a feature relevant for the use of VS. Furthermore, we observe that psychological verbs associated with the use of VS are produced from the earliest stages of L2 acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Purpose: The main aim of this study has been the psychometric validation of an Italian translation of the Nurse Professional Competence Scale-Short Form (I-NPCS-SF), testing its validity and reliability. Methods: A multiphase design was used for the I-NPCS-SF translation and psychometric validation: (a) cultural and linguistic validation, (b) content and face validity, and (c) construct validity. Results: The I-NPCS-SF showed adequate linguistic translation, cultural adaptation, and content validity. Confirmatory factor analysis supported a four-factor structure of the I-NPCS-SF, in explaining data obtained from nurses and nursing students. Conclusions: The I-NPCS-SF demonstrated evidence of validity and reliability in measuring four professional competencies. Having an appropriate tool to be applied in the Italian context for professional competence self-assessment constitutes an essential step in measuring professional competencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we investigated whether different morphosyntactic features, i.e. number and gender, play a role during the adult online comprehension of subject relative clauses (SRC) and object relative clauses (ORC), in Italian. This study was inspired by developmental studies showing that children struggle with ORC compared to SRC; yet, ORC comprehension improves if the head and the subject of the RC mismatch in relevant morphosyntactic features (e.g. number but not gender in Italian, based on the featural Relativized Minimality principle, fRM). We found that Italian adults read ORC more slowly than SRC verbs; moreover, ORC verbs were read faster in the head-subject number mismatch condition, while there was no facilitation in the head-subject gender mismatch condition, in line with developmental studies and fRM. We conclude that online parsing is feature-sensitive, that features are not all equally "relevant", and that current models should be refined to account for these differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Oral repetition in Transcortical Sensory Aphasia (TSA) has been shown to display linguistically informed altering of purposefully grammatically incorrect repetition stimuli, with a tendency to correct grammatical errors during repetition in spite of the absence of semantic comprehension. The present TSA single-case study, conducted in Italian, investigated the processing of linguistic Gender agreement errors through a series of oral repetition tasks, with the purpose of (i) investigating whether grammatical and semantic Gender can be independently spared; and (ii) investigating whether Gender agreement errors are informative among the linguistic facts that the patient retains sensitivity towards, and if so, how. TST, a native speaker of Italian diagnosed with TSA, was administered 8 oral repetition tasks, each containing Gender agreement errors that occurred either in phrase condition (i.e., "definite article + noun"), or in sentence condition (i.e., "subject + nominal predicate"). These different conditions were formulated with the purpose of appreciating possible differences in the processing of the Gender feature in two different syntactic environments. A number of additional variables was introduced: singular/plural; feminine/masculine; Gender morphological (un)informativeness; common noun/proper name status; animate/inanimate noun referents. During repetition, the changes applied by the patient were almost exclusively corrective and mostly followed a left-to-right strategy. Among the introduced variables, those that gave significant effects were as follows: animate/inanimate noun referents and phrase/sentence agreement. Gender morphological (un)informativeness gave no significant effects, and neither did common noun/proper name status, singular/plural and feminine/masculine nouns. Implications for linguistic theory in terms of the Gender/Class pairing are discussed. Findings indicate that (i) grammatical and semantic Gender can be independently spared; and (ii) in Italian, Gender is morphologically realized and could consequently be accessed for the purposes of agreement only in the case of nouns of the animate kind: Gender of animate nouns elicited corrective changes, while Gender of inanimate nouns was utterly ignored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infant-directed speech (IDS) is an essential factor of mother–infant interaction and facilitates early language processing and word learning during dyadic interactions. This study aimed to longitudinally investigate emotional and prosodic components of IDS in the first year of life by analyzing children's responses to the different prosodic trends that mothers use during the observation of mother–child interactions. Seventeen mothers and infants were recruited for this study during their first hospitalization. The study involved observing communication changes in face-to-face interactions between the mother and child at three, six, and nine months after the child's birth. We analyzed the relationship between gaze direction, smiling, speech speed, and clarity. The results showed that the IDS differs in production when compared to the age of the child; at only nine months, there is high intensity. The same is evident from the results related to the elocution velocity. The verbal sensitivity of the mother and the ability to tune in to the affective states of the child, especially at nine months, can predict the child's understanding of future language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Broad or inclusive language has reached the attention of media and public debate during the last decades. In Italy, the publication by Alma Sabatini "Raccomandazioni per un uso non sessista della lingua italiana" was an important starting point. The paper focuses on the linguistic innovation as a moment of the society/language interaction, within the theoretical framework of the law and language parallel. The opposition between descriptivism and prescriptivism in linguistics will be challenged, by interpreting the linguistic norm and the legal norm as driver for social transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to understand the contribution of geographical information in the perception of linguistic variation. A total of 813 mental maps collected among young speakers from different cities in Tuscany have been analyzed via an open-access web dialectometric tool (Gabmap). In particular, the study seeks to verify the role of geographic distance and the place of residence of the respondents in modeling perceived variation. The relationship between dialect grouping as made by linguists and perceived taxonomies of sublinguistic areas is also investigated. Results show that geographical proximity between mapped areas significantly predicts the perception of dialect similarity. Our participants made their decisions looking at (1) a keen sense of spatial contiguity, and (2) the synchronic presence of linguistic differences between the Tuscan subregions. Moreover, classification uncertainty grows when the mapped areas are very close to, or very distant from, the participants' places of residence. Methodological and linguistic perspectives of mental maps in folk linguistics are finally discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study investigated linguistic predictors of word reading and spelling skills in a cross-linguistic comparison (French vs. Italian) in heritage bilinguals (HBs) and their monolingual peers. The sample included 265 children (French: n = 113; 67 monolinguals and 46 HBs; Italian: n = 152; 82 monolinguals and 70 HBs) attending Grades 3, 4, and 5 while performing oral language, reading, and spelling tasks. The battery included verbal knowledge, morphosyntactic comprehension, nonword repetition, word reading (speed and accuracy), and spelling tasks. Results showed that for reading speed, there were no main effects of single predictors, but a significant interaction of morphosyntactic comprehension by language of schooling emerged. For reading accuracy, there was a main effect of verbal knowledge and syntactic comprehension, with a significant interaction of verbal knowledge and language of schooling. Finally, spelling accuracy was predicted only by linguistic status. The results suggest different pathways for word reading and spelling, with oral language skills' main role in reading accuracy and linguistic status's main role in spelling skills, possibly hindered by linguistic exposure and lexical access. Discussions are focused on potential implications for multilingual settings and cross-linguistic research., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

When mentally exploring maps representing large-scale environments (e.g., countries or continents), humans are assumed to mainly rely on spatial information derived from direct perceptual experience (e.g., prior visual experience with the geographical map itself). In the present study, we rather tested whether also temporal and linguistic information could account for the way humans explore and ultimately represent this type of maps. We quantified temporal distance as the minimum time needed to travel by train across Italian cities, while linguistic distance was retrieved from natural language through cognitively plausible AI models based on non-spatial associative learning mechanisms (i.e., distributional semantic models). In a first experiment, we show that temporal and linguistic distances capture with high-confidence real geographical distances. Next, in a second behavioral experiment, we show that linguistic information can account for human performance over and above real spatial information (which plays the major role in explaining participants' performance) in a task in which participants have to judge the distance between cities (while temporal information was found to be not relevant). These findings indicate that, when exploring maps representing large-scale environments, humans do take advantage of both perceptual and linguistic information, suggesting in turn that the formation of cognitive maps possibly relies on a strict interplay between spatial and non-spatial learning principles., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Background: The survival of extremely low birth weight infants (ELBW) has increased worldwide. Even in the absence of major disabilities, ELBW infants show difficulty in simple language functions. It is relevant to assess early abilities, which are the base of early linguistic skills, in order to implement customized intervention programs in ELBW infants. Aims: To evaluate communication precursors of language development in ELBW infants at 12 and 24 months of correct age (C.A). To investigate the correlation of linguistic and communicative prerequisites with mental development outcome at 24 months CA. Method: 52 ELBW neonates (mean gestational age 26.6 weeks, mean birth weight was 775 g) who were admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit of the University Hospital of Modena, were enrolled. Data were collected from archived audio-video recordings of neurodevelopmental follow-up visits. Video analysis of communicative and linguistic developmental was performed at 12 and 24 months CA. Neurodevelopmental outcome was evaluated with Mental Developmental Scales (GMDS-R). Results: The video-analysis showed that infants at 12 months CA used predominantly eye contacts and gestural turns, while vocal turns were scant. At 24 months CA, a significant change in eye contacts, vocal turns, gestural turns, and utterances (p < 0.001) occurred. The total number of utterances (p = 0.036) and eye contacts (p = 0.045) were significantly correlated to the Development Quotient (DQ) of Hearing and Language scale. Moreover, a significant correlation was found with the Personal-Social scale vocal turns (p = 0.009) and the total number of utterances (p = 0,02). Finally, the Global Quotient of the GMDS-R was related to the Vocal Turns (p = 0.034) and the total number of Utterances (p = 0.013). Conclusions: ELBW infants at 12 months CA use predominantly eye contacts and gestural turns to communicate with adults. At 24 months CA, the child's communicative intention evolves from gestural to verbal communication. The latter is characterized by an increase in both vocal turns and the number of utterances produced during interaction. The video analysis we implement appears to be a sensitive tool for early assessment of communication and language development and to refine early intervention [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of the Web has brought about a staggering increase in the volume of transactions and a widening of markets, given the possibility of crossing national borders and erasing the concept of space in terms of geographical areas. It has also fostered the spread of a language designed for international communication, namely English as a Lingua Franca. In recent decades, however, other languages have proved their presence on the Web, even if their use is well below that of English. This has led to considerable translation activity. A large number of multilingual sites crowd the Web, offering products and services. To be competitive, these sites need to be adapted to the needs of their target markets, because every business enterprise has the opportunity to operate globally through the development of the Web. To this end, multilingual communication is of strategic importance and the professionals in charge of these tasks play a key role. Yet, many small and medium-sized enterprises in Italy still struggle to understand the importance of these developments. The article is completed by a brief presentation of a project proposed to the students of a Master's degree course in Linguistic Sciences, which consisted in the presentation of a questionnaire to be administered to small and medium-sized companies operating in the wine sector. The questionnaire aimed to investigate the various options that companies use to manage multilingual communication. The aim of the project was to make students aware of the importance of multilingual communication and to draw a realistic picture of the sector in which they would be professionally employed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scholarly activity of Gerhard Rohlfs represents an indispensable legacy for all scholars of Romance languages. His most important works are dictionaries and linguistic studies on the regions of Calabria, Apulia and Lucania, together with his Historische Grammatik der italienischen Sprache und ihrer Mundarten (1949-1954), translated and published in Italian during the following decade with the title Grammatica storica della lingua italiana e dei suoi dialetti (1966-1969). The importance of these contributions lies in a) the fact that they have provided excellent dictionaries and linguistic studies on the regions of Southern Italy, attracting renewed attention of scholars towards the linguistic history of Southern Italy; b) the author’s extraordinary ability to establish an extremely fruitful and direct contact with those strata of Italian society that have usually remained alien to any dialogue with university culture (Varvaro 1991, p. 141); c) a way of research which combines the historical-comparative method of neogrammatic descent with geolinguistic research (Tomasin 2017, p. 163). In this regard, the present contribution will draw a compendium of the experiences and factors that have helped shape the composite research profile of Gerhard Rohlfs, who, between tradition and innovation, has managed to earn the esteem and gratitude of generations of scholars, attract criticism, and to fuel important - but necessary - debates. Starting from these premises, we will trace the contribution of field research and linguistic geography in the genesis and structure of the Vocabolario dei Dialetti Salentini, a monumental lexicographical work that, sixty years after its publication, remains an unsurpassed point of reference in the history of Apulian lexicography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author analyzes the contribution offered by Gerhard Rohlfs to the studies of Balkan linguistics, in particular as regards the pastoral lexicon in Balkan, and in Greek and Romance varieties in contact in southern Italy. In particular the zoonyms referring to the Caprine subfamily (Caprinae) are compared in the two linguistic areas. Zoonyms show a great variability at the interdialectal, intradialectal, and idiolectal level and reflect a taxonomy characterized by an internal hierarchy that includes specializations related to gender, growth stages, external characteristics of animals, such as color, any defects or physical peculiarities useful to distinguish each member of the flock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The rapid social transformations make even the words used to describe reality outdated. Because of its responsibilities in the social system, pedagogy before other sceinces should question itself about what is happening. Given the national educational results especially in Southern Italy, the educational institutions rather than being a solution. The essay, proposes to start again from the knowledge of words on the part of school and university teachers. This could be the indispensable renewal of the pedagogical sector that uses outdated cultural categories and words, within a university system identified as one of the national symbols of the absence of merit. Therefore, it concludes with a call for parliaments to deal with education first and the economy second. Therefore, it concludes with an invitation to Parliaments to deal first with education and then with economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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