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Lo studio presenta un’analisi linguistica e testuale di produzioni scritte di italiano L2, con particolare attenzione alle forme verbali usate dagli apprendenti. L’analisi linguistica ha riguardato il verbo da un punto di vista sia grammaticale sia lessicale. Inoltre, il verbo è stato osservato in una precisa struttura argomentale (Verbo + Oggetto diretto), per indagare se fossero rispettate le restrizioni semantiche imposte dal verbo nella selezione degli argomenti. Parallelamente, l’analisi si è concentrata anche sulla scelta e sull’uso dell’avverbio, con lo scopo di osservare come gli apprendenti impieghino l’avverbio con funzione di modificatore del verbo. L’analisi testuale, invece, si è concentrata sull’architettura del testo e sull’area semantica e funzione linguistica dei verbi in relazione alla traccia e alla tipologia del testo. Infine, si affrontano interessanti riflessioni sullo sviluppo della competenza lessicale e testuale in italiano L2. The verb between lexicon and text: analysis of written productions by Italian l2 learners This study presents a linguistic and textual analysis of written productions of L2 Italian, with a focus on the verb forms used by learners. The linguistic analysis focused on the verb from both grammatical and lexical perspectives. In addition, the verb was observed in a precise argument structure (Verb + Direct Object), to investigate whether the semantic restrictions imposed by the verb in argument selection were respected. In parallel, the analysis also focused on the choice and use of the adverb, with the aim of observing how learners employed the adverb as a modifier of the verb. Textual analysis, on the other hand, focused on the architecture of the text and the semantic area and linguistic function of verbs in relation to the outline and text type. Finally, interesting reflections on the development of lexical and textual competence in Italian L2 are addressed.

Collocations are one of the most studied types of word combinations. Their intricate nature, based on varying degrees of restriction, begs the question as to how modifications in their typical form influence the way they are processed by native speakers and learners. In this study, an eye-tracking experiment was carried out. We compared native speakers and learners of Italian when processing typical (i.e., common) and atypical (i.e., uncommon) collocations of Italian. Atypical collocations were developed by manipulating the grammatical and lexical components of a set of typical collocations. We also investigated how the online processing was affected by the different modifications (i.e., lexical and grammatical) performed and proficiency levels included. Both kinds of modifications disrupt collocation processing, with lexical modification being generally more salient than grammatical modification in terms of processing costs. Further, proficiency level influences phraseological processing, with varying effects related to the different kinds of modifications. The findings of our study are largely in line with previous research, while providing new insights into how lexis and grammar affect phraseological processing. They contribute to the evidence on languages other than English, a still under-researched domain in second language acquisition as a whole.

Lo studio indaga la coerenza e la coesione in testi di scuola media e di scuola superiore. L’analisi si è concentrata sul piano della struttura del testo, su quello della pianificazione testuale e su quello lessicale, con un focus sulle unità fraseologiche. I risultati hanno mostrato che la coerenza è preservata nei testi di scuola media e di scuola superiore per quanto riguarda la struttura del testo e il lessico. Al contrario, la coesione del testo si dimostra debole, soprattutto nei testi di scuola media. L’analisi ha, poi, permesso un confronto con dati testuali L2, suggerendo interessanti analogie e differenze tra L1 e L2. Gaps between warp and weft? Strategies for coherence between text, sentence, and vocabulary The study focuses on two main properties of texts: coherence and cohesion. Texts written by secondary school and high school students were considered. Analyses mostly focused on the structure of the texts, the organization of the text’ units, the lexicon and the use of phraseological units. Results suggest that both secondary school and high school texts are coherent. However, cohesion was more challenging for students. Moreover, L1 text were compared with L2 texts, suggesting interesting similarities and differences between L1 and L2.

L’articolo descrive la progettazione, la realizzazione e le caratteristiche di un nuovo learner corpus di italiano L2: il corpus CELI. Il corpus raccoglie, sistematicamente, le produzioni scritte di apprendenti di italiano L2 che hanno superato le prove per la certificazione linguistica CELI dell’Università per Stranieri di Perugia in relazione ai livelli B1, B2, C1 e C2. Il corpus contiene 3041 testi prodotti da altrettanti apprendenti, con una distribuzione bilanciata dei token per livello di competenza. I metadati associati a ciascun testo includono: • il genere, la data di nascita, il numero di matricola e la nazionalità dell’apprendente; • il livello di competenza, secondo il QCER, relativo alla prova superata dall’apprendente; • il punteggio totale assegnato all’intera prova d’esame, il punteggio totale assegnato alla componente scritta dell’esame, il punteggio specifico assegnato alla singola produzione scritta, con i relativi punteggi assegnati alla competenza lessicale, alla competenza grammaticale, alla competenza sociolinguistica, e alla coerenza e coesione del testo prodotto; • il numero identificativo della traccia utilizzata per la produzione di ciascun testo, con l’indicazione del genere (lettera, e-mail, blog, racconto, articolo e relazione) e della tipologia (argomentativa, descrittiva e narrativa, o mista: descrittiva-narrativa; argomentativa-narrativa; argomentativa-descrittiva; argomentativa-narrativa-descrittiva) del testo prodotto. Il corpus CELI si presta a numerosi utilizzi sia sul versante della ricerca linguistico-acquisizionale, soprattutto in chiave pseudo-longitudinale, sia sul versante della pianificazione didattica, dello sviluppo di attività didattiche e del language testing. The CELI corpus: a new resource for studying Italian L2 acquisition The article illustrates the design, the development and the characteristics of a new learner corpus of Italian L2: the CELI corpus. The corpus systematically collects the written texts produced by learners of Italian L2 who have passed the CELI exams administered by University for Foreigners of Perugia in relation to proficiency levels B1, B2, C1 and C2. The corpus contains 3041 texts produced by the same number of learners, with a balanced distribution of the tokens in terms of proficiency level. The metadata associated with each text include: • gender, date of birth, student ID code and nationality of the learner; • CEFR proficiency level, related to the exam passed by the learner; • the score assigned to the entire exam, to the entire written component of the exam, and to the single written task together with scores pertaining to lexical, grammatical and sociolinguistic competence and to the cohesion and coherence of the produced text; • the ID number related to the task used to produce each text, with the indication of text genre (letter, e-mail, blog, story, article and report) and text type (argumentative, descriptive and narrative, or mixed: descriptive-narrative; argumentative-narrative; argumentative-descriptive; argumentative-narrative-descriptive). The CELI corpus lends itself to numerous uses both in the domain of second language acquisition research, particularly with regard to pseudo-longitudinal research designs, and in the domain of pedagogical planning, pedagogical materials design and language testing.

This article introduces the CELI corpus, a new learner corpus of written Italian consisting of ca. 600,000 tokens, evenly distributed among CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) proficiency levels B1, B2, C1 and C2. The collected texts derive from the language certification exams administered by the University for Foreigners of Perugia all around the world. The corpus contains rich metadata pertaining to text-related and learner-related variables. It expands the domain of learner corpora by being, among other things, both freely available online to the research community, and by focusing on a target language other than English. The article also presents and evaluates the POS-tagging procedure, thus contributing to best practices in learner corpus annotation.