Silvia D'Ortenzio (Venice)
Pied-piping relatives vs. standard relatives in Italian-speaking children with and without cochlear implants: evidence from a production task and a repetition task
The aim of this study is to investigate the production of pied-piping relatives (PPRC, La donna a cui ho venduto la macchina 'The woman to whom I sold the car') and standard relatives (SRC, Marco ha riparato la macchina che la donna ha comprato 'Marco repaired the car that the woman bought') in a group of children with CI and a group of normal hearing (NH) children. Both PPRCs and SRCs are derived by movement of an element to the left periphery, which leaves a trace in the position where it is interpreted. While SRCs are introduced by the complementizer che 'that', PPRCs are introduced by the relative pronouns cui 'who' and quale 'which' which move from their base position to the CP bringing a preposition or an article with them. Children correctly produce SRCs by the age of 3 (Belletti & Contemori, 2010), while PPRCs are avoided until the age of 10 (Guasti & Cardinaletti, 2003). PPRCs are difficult for children, because they are typical of the written and formal register and are acquired during school years through explicit teaching (Guasti & Cardinaletti, 2003). Instead, standard relatives are acquired before school, through oral exposure to the structure in an informal setting. We investigate the use of the two structures in children with cochlear implants (CI) and children with normal hearing (NH). We investigate whether the delayed access to the linguistic input has hindered the acquisition of these complex structures, which nonetheless are acquired late also by NH children. 11 children with CI (age: 7;10-10;5, mean: 9;4; mean age of diagnosis and HA fitting: 0;8; mean age of CI fitting: 3;2) were compared to 11 age-matched NH children. Children's production of standard subject and object relative clauses was assessed with a preference task (Volpato, 2010), while PPRCs were assessed with a sentence repetition task (Del Puppo et al., 2016). Results show that both the CI and the NH groups performed significantly better in SRCs (CI: 61%; NH: 89%) than in PPRCs (CI: 32%; NH: 37%) (p<.001 for both groups). As for SRCs, subject relatives were significantly more accurate than object relatives (CI: SR: 77%; OR:11%; NH: SR: 98%; TD: 5%, p<.01 for both groups). As for PPRCs, oblique relatives introduced by quale 'which' were problematic for both groups (CI: 27%; NH: 18%). The statistical analysis showed that oblique relatives introduced by quale are less accurate than oblique relative introduced by cui (p=.03) and genitive constructions (p=.02). Children resorted to several strategies to avoid the repetition of PPRCs introduced by quale. For example, they substituted the pronoun quale with cui (Il lupo guarda la bambina a cui la nonna dona un fiore 'The wolf looks at the girl whom the grandma gives a flower', instead of Il lupo guarda la bambina alla quale la nonna dona un fiore 'The wolf looks at the girl to which the grandma gives s flower'). We did not find any significant difference between the two groups considering both the preference and the sentence repetition tasks. We will carry out further analyses considering also CI group's clinical data (age of diagnosis, hearing experience).
References: Belletti, A., Contemori, C. (2010). Intervention and attraction. On the production of subject and object relatives by Italian (young) children and adults. Language acquisition and development, 3. Proceedings of Gala, 39-52. Del Puppo, G., Volpato, F., Padovani, R., Zavattiero, P., Lusuardi, A. (2016). Valutare la competenza sintattica di bambini con Disturbo Specifico del Linguaggio. Poster presented during the CLASTA VII conference, Calambrone, PI. Guasti, M. T., Cardinaletti, A. (2003). Relative clauses formation in Romance child's production. Probus, 15, 47-89. Volpato, F. (2010). The acquisition of relative clauses and phi-features: evidence from hearing and hearing-impaired populations. Doctoral Dissertation Ca' Foscari University of Venice.