Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T11:05:43.467Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Toward mastery of Italian morphology: a cross-sectional study*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

M. Cristina Caselli ,
Laurence B. Leonard ,
Virginia Volterra  and
M. Grazia Campagnoli
M. Cristina Caselli*
Affiliation:
Istituto di Psicologia del CNR, Rome
Laurence B. Leonard
Affiliation:
Purdue University
Virginia Volterra
Affiliation:
Istituto di Psicologia del CNR, Rome
M. Grazia Campagnoli
Affiliation:
Istituto di Psicologia del CNR, Rome
*
Address for correspondance: Istituto di Psicologia del CNR, Via Nomentana 56, 00161 Roma, Italy.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The use of Italian morphology was examined in 34 children ranging in age from 2;6 to 5;0. By the age of 3;6–4;0, high percentages of use in obligatory contexts were seen for a number of grammatical morphemes. Children age 2;6–3;0 showed percentages of use that were somewhat lower than those seen for the older children. In this age range, singular forms were used with higher percentages in obligatory contexts than plural forms, for several different types of grammatical morphemes. Greater control over singular forms in these younger children was corroborated by data from a comprehension task. Even at the younger ages studied, use of grammatical morphemes did not seem influenced by whether phonological eues to agreement were present, or whether the grammatical morphemes were homonymous. Percentages for grammatical morphemes in the form of free-standing morphemes were somewhat lower than percentages for morphemes taking the form of inflections, suggesting that the obligatory nature of inflections in Italian may be a more influential factor than the amount of morphological information contained in a grammatical morpheme.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , June 1993 , pp. 377 - 393
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[*]

The authors would like to thank Giuseppina Brutti, Elena Pizzuto and Umberta Bortolini for their valuable comments and assistance during this project.

References

REFERENCES

Antinucci, F. & Miller, R. (1976). How children talk about what happened. Journal of Child Language 3, 167–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bates, E. & Rankin, J. (1979). Morphological development in Italian: connotation and denotation. Journal of Child Language 6, 29–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, R. (1973). A first language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht, Holland: Foris.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1986). Barriers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
de Villiers, J. & de Villiers, P. (1973). A cross-sectional study of the acquisition of grammatical morphemes in child speech. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 2, 267–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Greenberg, J. (1986). Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. In Greenberg, J. (ed.), Universals of language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hyams, N. (1986). Language acquisition and the theory of parameters. Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyams, N. (1987). The setting of the null subject parameter: a re-analysis. Paper presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development.Google Scholar
Jaeggli, O. & Safir, K. (1989). The null subject parameter and parametric theory. In Jaeggli, O. & Safir, K. (eds), The null subject parameter. Dordrecht, Holland: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1979). A functional approach to child language. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Levy, Y. (1983). It's frogs all the way down. Cognition 15, 76–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Levy, Y. (1988). On the early learning of formal grammatical Systems: evidence from studies of the acquisition of gender and countability. Journal of Child Language 15, 179–87.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pizzuto, E. & Caselli, M. C. (1992). The acquisition of Italian morphology: implications for models of language development. Journal of Child Language 19, 491–557.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Radford, A. (1990). Syntactic theory and the acquisition of English syntax. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Rizzi, L. (1982). Issues in Italian syntax. Dordrecht, Holland: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slobin, D. (1973). Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar. In Ferguson, C. & Slobin, D. (eds), Studies of child language development. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Volterra, V. (1976). A few remarks on the use of the past participle in child language. Italian Linguistics 2, 149–57.Google Scholar