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Negli ultimi decenni, molte ricerche hanno investigato l’uso del priming sintattico come metodo per esplorare la produzione e la comprensione di specifiche strutture linguistiche. L’obiettivo di questo elaborato è fornire prove a supporto del fatto che diverse versioni di un training morfosintattico basato sul priming, da noi sviluppato, possono avere effetti di priming cumulativi e a lungo termine, considerando diverse strutture sintattiche complesse della lingua italiana, sia su bambini monolingui a sviluppo tipico, sia su bambini con Disturbo Primario del Linguaggio (DPL) e su bambini che imparano l’Italiano come seconda lingua. Anzitutto, i nostri risultati hanno confermato le nostre previsioni per cui la produzione delle strutture indagate, ossia i pronomi clitici oggetto di terza persona e le frasi passive, è ritardata nei bambini che imparano l’Italiano come seconda lingua rispetto ai bambini monolingui di pari età (Capitolo 3 e 4), così come hanno confermato che la mancata produzione dei pronomi clitici oggetto è un marker clinico del DPL nei bambini di lingua italiana (Capitolo 2). Inoltre, abbiamo anche trovato che mentre i bambini con DPL producono significativamente più pronomi clitici oggetto quando il loro genere grammaticale corrisponde a quello del soggetto della frase rispetto a quando i due elementi sono marcati con un genere grammaticale diverso (un risultato trovato anche nei bambini a sviluppo tipico), i bambini che imparano l’Italiano come seconda lingua producono significativamente più pronomi clitici oggetto quando tali pronomi sono espressi con il genere maschile, rispetto a quando sono di genere femminile. Dopodiché, ci siamo concentrati sul nostro obiettivo principale, ossia la verifica che il training da noi sviluppato sia in grado di migliorare la produzione di queste strutture nei bambini valutati. Abbiamo inoltre verificato se tali miglioramenti potessero persistere anche dopo diversi mesi, cosa che proverebbe che lo strumento può avere effetti di priming cumulativi e a lungo termine. Per di più, per le frasi passive analizzate nel Capitolo 4, abbiamo anche valutato se non solo la produzione ma anche la comprensione della struttura possa essere migliorata grazie al training nei bambini che imparano l’Italiano come seconda lingua. Effettivamente, abbiamo trovato che la produzione dei pronomi clitici oggetto era significativamente più alta sia dopo circa una settimana che dopo circa 3.5 mesi dal training rispetto a prima dello stesso nei bambini monolingui italiano con DPL (Capitolo 2) e nei bambini che imparano l’Italiano come seconda lingua (Capitolo 3). Allo stesso modo, abbiamo trovato che sia la produzione sia la comprensione delle frasi passive dei bambini più grandi che imparano l’Italiano come seconda lingua, da noi valutati nel Capitolo 4, erano significativamente più alte (circa una settimana e circa 2 mesi) dopo il training che prima dello stesso, il che depone a favore dell’esistenza di effetti di priming bidirezionale. In ultimo, abbiamo trovato che il training è stato efficace a prescindere dalla competenza linguistica in Italiano (in termini di comprensione del vocabolario e della grammatica) dei bambini con DPL e dei bambini che imparano l’Italiano come seconda lingua che hanno partecipato al training. Altri fattori legati alla seconda lingua sono stati esplorati nei Capitoli 3 e 4 e il solo fattore che è risultato avere un impatto sull’efficacia del training è stato trovato nel Capitolo 4: il contesto di primo apprendimento dell’Italiano dei bambini più grandi che lo imparano come seconda lingua ha impattato significativamente sull’efficacia a lungo termine del training nel migliorare la produzione di frasi passive. I risultati del presente elaborato, anche se sono solo preliminari, forniscono nuove informazioni sul possibile impatto del priming sull’acquisizione di una lingua, così come sul trattamento dei disturbi del linguaggio. In the last decades, much research has been devoted to the investigation of syntactic priming as a method to explore the production and comprehension of specific linguistic structures. With this dissertation, we aimed at providing evidence that different versions of a morphosyntactic priming-based production-focused training program, which we developed, can have cumulative long-term priming effects, considering different Italian complex syntactic structures, not only on monolingual typically developing children but also, most importantly, on children with Developmental Language Disorders (DLD) and early second language learners of Italian. First, our results confirmed our assumption that the production of the investigated structures, namely third person direct object clitic pronouns and passive sentences, is indeed delayed in early second language children with respect to their monolingual aged-matched peers (Chapters 3 and 4), as well as the fact that the failure to produce object clitics is a clinical marked for DLD in Italian-speaking children (Chapter 2). Moreover, we also found that the children with DLD produced significantly more object clitics when their gender marking matched that of the sentence’s subject with respect to when the two elements were in gender mismatch (a result also found in the typically developing children). In comparison, the early second language children produced significantly more object clitics when they were masculine marked than when they were feminine marked. Then, we focused on our main aim, which was to assess if the training program we developed could enhance the production of the aforementioned structures in the investigated children. We also verified if those enhancements would persist over several months, which would prove that the instrument can have cumulative long-term priming effects. Moreover, for the passives investigated in Chapter 4, we also evaluated whether not only the production but also the comprehension of the structure can be enhanced thanks to the training in early second language children. Indeed, we found that the production of object clitics was significantly higher both around one week and 3.5 months after the training program than before it in monolingual Italian children with DLD (Chapter 2) and young early second language learners of Italian (Chapter 3). Similarly, we found that both the production and the comprehension of passive sentences of the older early second language children we assessed in Chapter 4 were significantly higher (around one week and 2 months) after the training than before it, which speaks in favor of the existence of bidirectional priming effects. Lastly, we found that the training program was overall effective independently of the linguistic competence in Italian (in terms of vocabulary and grammar comprehension) of the children with DLD and the early second language children who participated in the training program. Other second language related factors were explored in Chapters 3 and 4, and the only factor that resulted as impacting on the effectiveness of the training program was found in Chapter 4: The context in which the older early second language children started learning Italian impacted on the long-term effectiveness of training program in enhancing passives production. The results of this dissertation, even though they are only preliminary, provide novel insights about the possible impact of priming on the acquisition of a language, as well as on the treatment of language disorders. More investigation should be carried out, involving more children and with a more rigorous methodology, to provide the necessary experimental support for the distribution of the app version of our training program as a therapeutic and language learning device.

Background: The comprehension profile of people with agrammatism is a debated topic. Syntactic complexity and cognitive resources, in particular phonological short-term memory (pSTM), are considered as crucial components by different interpretative accounts. Aim: To investigate the interaction of syntactic complexity and of pSTM in sentence comprehension in a group of persons with aphasia with and without agrammatism. Methods & Procedures: A cohort of 30 participants presenting with aphasia was assessed for syntactic comprehension and for pSTM. A total of 15 presented with agrammatism and 15 had fluent aphasia. Outcomes & Results: Linear nested mixed-model analyses revealed a significant interaction between sentence type and pSTM. In particular, participants with lower pSTM scores showed a reduced comprehension of centre-embedded object relatives and long coordinated sentences. Moreover, a significant interaction was found between sentence type and agrammatism, with a lower performance for passives within the agrammatic group. Conclusions & Implications: These results confirm that pSTM is involved in the comprehension of complex structures with an important computational load, in particular coordinated sentences, and long-distance filler gap dependencies. On the contrary, the specific deficit of the agrammatic group with passives is a pure syntactic deficit, with no involvement of pSTM.

This paper examines the diachrony of two neoclassical prefixes in Italian, namely semi- (from Latin sēmi- ‘half’) and para- (from Ancient Greek parà close to’), based on data extracted from corpora. The diachronic analysis reveals that until the 20th century, both the prefixes semi- and para- were mostly used in scientific terminology, where they conveyed their original meanings: degree and spatial proximity respectively. A cursory synchronic analysis based on data extracted from two newspaper corpora shows that in the last decades, semi- and para- have been productively used to express evaluative values (i.e., attenuation and approximation). The present study enriches the literature on the sources of approximating morphological markers and the relationship between attenuation and approximation, considered here as two distinct values placed along a continuum.

Relative clauses are subordinate clauses acting as nominal modifiers. They can be finite or nonfinite in Romance languages, with finite relative clauses largely more productive and widespread across varieties. Relative clauses contain a position interpreted anaphorically to the modified noun phrase (NP) that can correspond to a gap (as in most standard varieties) or to a resumptive pronoun, as in Romanian and in many substandard varieties. In most Romance languages, relative clauses are introduced either by the invariant element che/que or by some relative pronoun (il quale/lequel/el cual . . .) depending on the grammatical function of the variable it refers to.

The European Union has set as one of the European Education Area initiative’s goals the promotion of an inclusive high-quality education. In pursuance of its aims the EU has acknowledged the relevance of the promotion of language learning and the creation of a multilingual community (EU). The importance and challenge of a multilingual mind was observed not only from a bureaucratic point of view, but also and especially from an academic perspective; over the years, more and more researchers (E.g., Volterra e Taeschner, 1978; Genesse, 1989; Romaine, 1995; Guasti, 2007; Atkinson, 2011) have conducted studies on bilingual development at an early age. Nevertheless, the creation of a multilingual and multicultural scenario raises some obstacles; in a country, such as Italy, which, in the last quarter of the 20th century, experienced an accelerated spread of the national language that led from a situation of widespread dialect monolingualism, to extensive bilingualism and in recent years back to a common Italian monolingualism (Berruto, 2021), offering an efficient pedagogical approaches and foreign language teaching methods represents a challenge to overcome. The problem of foreign language teaching grows even more complicated at pre-school age. When working with young children, rather than carrying out a traditional didactic second language teaching and learning method, which may lead to stress associated to the second language, it might be more efficient to nurture a positive attitude towards foreign languages through the implementation of a Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) approach. Ellis (1994), Arnold (1999) and Daloiso (2009) have noted that negative emotions related to the second language acquisition proses might jeopardize the language performance and, therefore, the creation of a multilingual mind. On the other hand, Coyle (2006) claims that a CLIL approach can motivate both language learners and teachers (ivi.), becoming a strategy for exploring different languages and developing metalinguistic aspects in the absence of the possibility of language immersion. In order to see how a CLIL approach may affect second language acquisition in young children a case study, following a qualitative method, has been conducted at the Kindergarten Bambini Bicocca. During a period of time of one year, Italian children, aged between 3 and 6 years, have been exposed to the English language for approximately 5 hours per day. Three language specialists were working with the kids during that period of time. The data was gathered though video and audio recordings, and paper and pencil observations. Subsequently it was processed following a diachronic analysis. By doing so it was possible to monitor not only the evolution of the second language competences but mainly the change in behaviour towards the second language.

Mentre processiamo il linguaggio sfruttiamo indizi linguistici per anticipare le parole; tuttavia, i parlanti bilingui possono essere più lenti dei parlanti nativi nella loro seconda lingua (L2) ed essere soggetti all'influenza della loro prima lingua (L1) (Kaan & Grüter, 2021; Pickering & Gambi, 2018). Sappiamo che i bambini monolingui utilizzano l'elaborazione predittiva fin dalla giovane età (Mani & Huettig, 2012), ma ad oggi pochissimi studi si sono concentrati sui bambini bilingui (Brouwer et al., 2017; Lemmerth & Hopp, 2019). In questa tesi vogliamo colmare questa lacuna, indagando come l’elaborazione linguistica predittiva in diversi gruppi di bambini bilingui sia influenzata dalla dominanza linguistica, dall'influenza cross-linguistica e dall'alfabetizzazione dei parlanti. Il lavoro presenta diversi studi sperimentali condotti mediante la registrazione dei movimenti oculari in contesto visivo per verificare se i bambini bilingui sono in grado di anticipare il nome in una frase sfruttando gli indizi di genere e numero sull’articolo che lo precede. Lo studio 1 ha testato l'elaborazione dell’indizio morfosintattico di genere e l'influenza cross-linguistica nei bilingui tedesco-italiano con diversi livelli di competenza linguistica nelle due lingue (N = 63, età 6-9); lo studio 2 ha testato l'elaborazione dell’indizio di numero in italiano e in inglese in bambini italiani frequentanti una scuola bilingue italo-inglese (N = 36 , età 7-8); lo studio 3 ha testato l'effetto delle differenze linguistiche sull'elaborazione degli indizi di genere e numero nei bilingui sequenziali arabo-italiano e mandarino-italiano rispetto ai controlli monolingui (N = 78, età 8-12); infine, lo studio 4 ha esplorato la relazione tra lettura e predizione nei bambini italiani multilingui e monolingui (N = 70, età 8-12). Nel complesso, i nostri risultati mostrano che i bambini bilingui anticipano i nomi sulla base di indizi morfosintattici, sebbene in alcuni casi risultino più lenti dei coetanei monolingui quando testati nella loro seconda lingua o nella lingua non dominante. Questo si riscontra in modo particolare nel caso in cui la L1 non abbia gli stessi tratti grammaticali della lingua testata, o nel caso in cui ci sia un’interferenza cross-linguistica fra le due lingue (per esempio, quando c’è un'incongruenza di genere fra L1 e L2). Per quanto riguarda l'alfabetizzazione, abbiamo trovato una relazione tra lettura e predizione per i bambini monolingui ma non per i bambini multilingui. Tuttavia, la grande variabilità individuale nella competenza linguistica e nell’uso delle due lingue nel gruppo dei bilingui può rendere meno evidente un possibile effetto dell’esperienza di alfabetizzazione sui processi predittivi. Studi futuri dovrebbero approfondire questo aspetto, considerando diversi tipi di capacità di predizione linguistica e non linguistica, tenendo conto della grande variabilità individuale che caratterizza il bilinguismo nell’età evolutiva. Listeners use linguistic cues to anticipate upcoming words, but bilingual speakers may sometimes be slower when tested in a second language (L2), and they may experience cross-linguistic influence from their native language (L1) (Kaan & Grüter, 2021; Pickering & Gambi, 2018). We know that monolingual children use predictive processing from a young age (Mani & Huettig, 2012), but to date very few studies have focused on bilingual children (Brouwer et al., 2017; Lemmerth & Hopp, 2019). This dissertation aims to fill this gap, by investigating to what extent linguistic prediction in different groups of bilingual children is influenced by language dominance, cross-linguistic influence and literacy. We created different visual world eye-tracking experiments to test whether children would anticipate nouns on the basis of preceding gender and number cues. Study 1 tested gender processing and cross-linguistic influence in German-Italian bilinguals with varying dominance profiles (N = 63, age 6-9), Study 2 tested L1 and L2 processing of number in Italian early L2 learners of English (N = 36, age 7-8), Study 3 tested the effect of linguistic differences on gender and number processing in Arabic- and Mandarin-Italian sequential bilinguals compared to monolingual controls (N = 78, age 8-12), and Study 4 explored the relation between reading and prediction in multilingual and monolingual Italian children (N = 70, age 8-12). Overall, our results show that bilingual children anticipate nouns on the basis of morphosyntactic cues, although in some cases they were slower than monolingual peers when tested in a non-native or non-dominant language. This was the case especially when children had to rely on a grammatical feature was absent in their L1, or when they experienced cross-linguistic influence due to gender incongruency. With respect to literacy, we found a relation between reading and prediction for monolingual children but not for multilingual children. A possible reason for this is that the great individual differences in language proficiency and use among bilingual children may obscure any subtle effects of literacy experience. Future studies should investigate this further, by considering different types of linguistic as well as non-linguistic prediction abilities, whilst taking into account the great individual variation that characterizes child bilingualism.

This is a reply to Caponigro 2019, which argues that the phrase structure theory proposed in Donati and Cecchetto 2011 and Cecchetto and Donati 2015 falls short of accounting for the attested patterns of free relative clauses. Caponigro questions the reliability of the data supporting D&C’s hypothesis that ever-relatives introduced by a phrase (ever+NP relatives) should not be assimilated to free relatives. This reply reports the findings of four controlled experiments in English and Italian and discusses five properties that set free relatives apart from full relatives (occurrence with a complementizer, occurrence with a relative pronoun, infinitival use, absolute use, adverbial use). Crucially, ever+NP relatives do not pattern like free relatives in any of these five domains, either in Italian or in English. This clearly shows that ever-relatives are not a counterexample to D&C’s phrase structure theory. Another potential counterexample, Romanian free relatives, is also discussed. As for ever+NP relatives, in Italian they are shown to be garden-variety headed relatives, while in English they are headed relatives that involve a D-to-D movement that is responsible for the syntactic formation of the complex determiner what+ever.

This paper presents a new diachronic corpus of the Italian language, i.e., CODIT (COrpus Diacronico dell’ITaliano ‘Diachronic corpus of Italian’). After a description of the corpus design, the second part of the article is devoted to show possible applications of the corpus in the morphological field, specifically in the domain of evaluative morphology. We highlight the corpus’ strengths and limitations through the diachronic analysis of two affixes, i.e., sopra- and -oide. The study contributes to shed light on the dynamism of evaluative morphology by focusing on the loss of the intensification function suffered by sopra- and the emergence of an approximating value that currently affects -oide. Cet article présente un nouveau corpus diachronique de la langue italienne : CODIT (COrpus Diacronico dell’ITaliano « Corpus diachronique de l’italien »). Après une description du corpus, la deuxième partie de l’article est consacrée à montrer les applications du corpus dans le domaine morphologique, en particulier dans le domaine de la morphologie évaluative. Nous soulignons les forces et les limites du corpus à travers l’analyse diachronique de deux affixes, sopra- ‘sur-’ et -oide ‘-oïd’. L’étude contribue à éclairer le dynamisme de la morphologie évaluative en s’intéressant à la perte de la fonction d’intensification subie par sopra- et à l’émergence d’une valeur d’approximation qui affecte actuellement -oide.

Previous research has hypothesized that human sequential processing may be dependent upon hearing experience (the “auditory scaffolding hypothesis”), predicting that sequential rule learning abilities should be hindered by congenital deafness. To test this hypothesis, we compared deaf signer and hearing individuals’ ability to acquire rules of different computational complexity in a visual artificial grammar learning task using sequential stimuli. As a group, deaf participants succeeded at all levels of the task; Bayesian analysis indicates that they successfully acquired each of several target grammars at ascending levels of the formal language hierarchy. Overall, these results do not support the auditory scaffolding hypothesis. However, age- and education-matched hearing participants did outperform deaf participants in two out of three tested grammars. We suggest that this difference may be related to verbal recoding strategies in the two groups. Any verbal recoding strategies used by the deaf signers would be less effective because they would have to use the same visual channel required for the experimental task.

This article investigates the emerging affix -iota in Italian, whose development is related to the morphological reanalysis of the word italiota as a blend of italiano ‘Italian’ and idiota ‘idiot’. Based on data extracted from a web corpus, the analysis addresses the morphological properties of blends containing the adjective -(id)iota and the usage contexts of italiota, focusing on the semantic fields of its collocates. We found that blends with both -(i)diota and -iota are productive and that -iota displays affix-like properties and a derogatory meaning, especially in political discourse. This study confirms that the parts of blends belonging to extra-grammatical morphology (Dressler 2000; Mattiello 2018) can undergo a change that leads them to acquire affix-like properties and get closer to more regular morphology.

Fine-grained variables based on semantic proximity of words can provide helpful diagnostic information when applied to the analysis of Verbal Fluency tasks. However, before leaving human-based ratings in favour of measures derived from distributional approaches, it is essential to assess the performance of the latter against that of the former. In this work, we analysed a Verbal Fluency task using measures of semantic proximity derived from Distributional Semantic Models of language, and we show how Machine Learning models based on them are less accurate in classifying patients with focal dementias than the same models built on human-based ratings. We discuss the possible interpretation of these results and the implications for the application of distributional semantics in clinical settings.

On the comprehension of reflexive si in preschool Italian-speaking children The derivation of passive structures is known to be complex, which is why a full and productive mastery of passives appears cross-linguistically relatively late in development (around age 5-6) [1],[2],[7]. In Italian, production and priming experiments have shown that at the age of 5, children produce si-causative constructions in answering patient-oriented questions, a condition in which adults systematically opt for full (copular/periphrastic) passives [3],[4]. Interestingly, the same experimental setting has also led young children to use reflexive structures [1],[4]. This behaviour appears to contradict the robust conclusion that, by age 3-4, children master reflexive binding and thus do not misinterpret sentences with reflexives [6],[7]. Alternatively, as proposed by the “reflexive passive hypothesis” [5], these reflexive constructions attested in development may in fact represent first attempts at producing passives, via exploitation of si as an (impersonal-generic) middle/passive morpheme, rather than as a reflexive, thus overextending a grammatical option available in the target language. With a view at verifying the “reflexive passive hypothesis” [5], we created a sentence-picture matching task as 2AFC task targeting comprehension of reflexive structures in contexts that can be ambiguous between a reflexive and a middle/passive reading of the sentence containing si. Specifically, couples of pictures involving the same characters and the same verbal action were presented to children. However, in one case, the action was depicted as reflexive; in the other, it was represented as transitive. Participants were told to look at the pictures and to select the one corresponding to what the experimenter said – which was always a reflexive prompt. An example of experimental item is provided in Figure 1. Binomial logistic regression analyses in an intercept-only model with item as random intercept were conducted on the responses supplied by 33 out of the 42 TD Italian-speaking children tested, all aged 3;4-4;3. The analysis of item responses revealed that, even though some items received more reflexive answers and others more transitive ones, there was no item inducing significant preference for either type of answer. The examination of individual results, then, showed that most subjects pended towards either the target or the non-target option, but this tendency was never significant. Therefore, independently of whether performance was completely at chance or pending towards one interpretation, children generally appeared not to properly understand the reflexive structure they were presented with. Consequently, 3-4-yos can be said to have troubles with the reflexive interpretation regulated by the binding Principle A when the experimental condition can induce a concurrent passive reading of the sentence containing si. In this situation, a correct, adult-like interpretation of the reflexive is hindered, and an oscillation between the reflexive and the passive reading is observed. This interpretation does not contradict previous findings on early mastering of Principle A: Principle A can be assumed to be in place and to be correctly computed by 3-4-yo Italian-speaking children. However, when a competing interpretational option is also available, their behaviour becomes at chance due to the concomitant availability of the equally plausible transitive reading, with si playing the role of a passive voice. These results are consistent with the previous findings from early elicited child production by Italian typically developing children [1],[4], thus confirming a homogeneous treatment of the same grammatical options in both production and comprehension. References [1] Manetti, C. 2013. On the production of passives in Italian: evidence from an elicited production task and a syntactic priming study with preschool children. In: Baiz, S., Goldman, N., and Hawkes, R. eds. Boston University Conference on Language Development 37th Online Proceedings Supplement. [2] Guasti, M.T. 2016. Voice Alternations (Active, Passive, Middle). In: Lidz, J.L., Snyder, W. and Pater, J. eds. The Oxford Handbook of Developmental Linguistics. Oxford/New York: Oxford University press. [3] Manetti, C. and Belletti, A. 2015. Causatives and the acquisition of the Italian passive. In: Hamann, C. and Ruigendijk, E. eds. Language Acquisition and Development (Selected proceedings of Gala-2013 – University of Oldenburg). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 282–298. [4] Belletti, A. and Manetti, C. 2019. Topics and passives in Italian-speaking children and adults. Language Acquisition. 26(2), pp. 153-182. [5] Belletti, A. 2020. (Reflexive) Si as a route to passive in Italian. In: Franco, L. and Lorusso, P. eds. Linguistic Variation: Structure and Interpretation. Boston/Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 73-86. [6] Hamann, C. 2011. Binding and Coreference: Views from Child Language. In: De Villiers, J. and Roeper, T. eds. Handbook of Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition. Berlin: Springer, pp. 247-285. [7] Guasti, M.T. 2016a. Language Acquisition: The Growth of Grammar. Cambridge: MIT

This study investigates linguistic prediction based on grammatical gender in Italian-German bilingual children aged six to ten, using a visual world eye-tracking paradigm. Children listened to sentences while looking at objects that either matched or mismatched in grammatical gender, and that varied with respect to cross-linguistic gender congruency. To explore the effect of language dominance on processing, we tested children in bilingual schools in Italy and Germany, with an experiment in Italian (N=63) and in German (N=25). Results show rapid predictive processing, as children anticipated nouns based on the grammatical gender of articles. Furthermore, in the Italian task (but not in the German task), children exhibited a ‘gender congruency effect’, i.e., they showed cross-linguistic influence when the grammatical gender of the two languages did not overlap, leading to delayed anticipation. In contrast to previous research, this effect was also observed in simultaneous bilingual children. Both the extent to which children relied on predictive processing and the likelihood of a gender congruency effect were related to children’s language dominance, operationalized as relative language proficiency in terms of vocabulary knowledge.

In a previous study, our research group investigated the expression of irony in Italian Sign Language (LIS) and suggested that specific manual and non-manual markers signaled the signer’s meaning and attitude. The present research aimed at expanding those findings by analyzing whether these markers are used in irony recognition and whether they are language-specific. We designed an experiment in which we compared recognition of ironic remarks out of context considering three groups of Italians: Deaf signers, hearing signers, and hearing non-signers. Our aim was to verify whether the manual and non-manual markers we associated with the expression of irony in LIS constitute a reliable cue to detect irony and whether these cues were accessible to signers more than to non-signers sharing the same cultural background. Although the ironic intent in LIS was accessible also to hearing non-signers, we found, among hearing participants, that knowledge of LIS does improve accuracy in recognizing ironic remarks in LIS. This suggests that signers’ facial expressions and bodily movements do not solve a purely affective function, but are grammaticalized, at least to some degree.

In this paper, we present two experimental studies on the co-speech Mano a Tulipano (MAT), a gesture that is extensively used by native speakers of Italian and that typically accompanies interrogative speech acts. While there is broad consensus, in both the descriptive and the more formal literature, that MAT has a question meaning, there is no consensus on what kind of question is conveyed or marked by this gesture. Some researchers argue that co-speech MAT is ambiguous and can occur with both canonical and non-canonical questions. Other researchers have argued that MAT is presuppositional in nature and is only compatible with non-canonical questions. To test the hypothesis that MAT is fully compatible with non- canonical questions only, we conducted two acceptability judgment studies in which the participants’ task was to evaluate the appropriateness of the MAT gesture associated to two types of questions: a canonical question (i.e., a context in which, according to the presuppositional account of MAT, the presupposition is not satisfied), and a non-canonical (biased) question. We ran a binary forced-choice sentence evaluation task (Study 1) and a gradient acceptability judgment study (Study 2) to test if and at which rate Italian participants accepted the MAT gesture accompanying canonical questions. Our results show that MAT is fully acceptable only when the presupposition that the question is non-canonical is satisfied, compatibly with the presuppositional account. When this presupposition is not supported by the context, judgments on MAT were more variable across participants when a binary judgment was requested (Study 1); moreover, MAT received intermediate ratings by all the participants when a gradient judgment was required (Study 2)., Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung, Vol. 26 (2022): Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung

Several studies investigated preschoolers’ ability to compute scalar and ad-hoc implicatures, but only one compared children's performance with both kinds of implicature with the same task, a picture selection task. In Experiment 1 (N= 58, age: 4;2-6;0), we first show that the truth value judgment task, traditionally employed to investigate children's pragmatic ability, prompts a rate of pragmatic responses comparable to the picture selection task. In Experiment 2 (N= 141, age: 3;8-9;2) we used the picture selection task to compare scalar and ad-hoc implicatures and linked the ability to derive these implicatures to some cognitive and linguistic measures. We found that four- and five-year-olds children performed better on ad-hoc than on scalar implicatures. Furthermore, we found that morphosyntactic competence was associated with success in both kinds of implicatures, while performance on mental state reasoning was positively associated with success on scalar but not ad-hoc implicatures.

Different words generally have different meanings. However, some words seemingly share similar meanings. An example are null and overt pronouns in Italian, which both refer to an individual in the discourse. Is the interpretation and processing of a form affected by the existence of another form with a similar meaning? With a pupillary response study, we show that null and overt pronouns are processed differently. Specifically, null pronouns are found to be less costly to process than overt pronouns. We argue that this difference is caused by an additional reasoning step that is needed to process marked overt pronouns but not unmarked null pronouns. A comparison with data from Dutch, a language with overt but no null pronouns, demonstrates that Italian pronouns are processed differently from Dutch pronouns. These findings suggest that the processing of a marked form is influenced by alternative forms within the same language, making its processing costly.