Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T05:38:08.913Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The comprehension and production of verbal passives by Italian preschool-age children

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2015

FRANCESCA VOLPATO ,
LAURA VERIN  and
ANNA CARDINALETTI
FRANCESCA VOLPATO*
Affiliation:
Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia
LAURA VERIN
Affiliation:
Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia
ANNA CARDINALETTI
Affiliation:
Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Francesca Volpato, Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies, Dorsoduro 1075, Venice 30123, Italy. E-mail: fravol@unive.it
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper investigates the comprehension and the production of passive sentences in Italian-speaking children (aged 3 years, 4 months to 6 years, 2 months) analyzing both the variables observed in previous studies on other languages (verb type and presence of the by-phrase) versus an Italian-specific variable: the use of auxiliary venire “to come.” Because Italian venire is only possible in verbal passives, this property is crucial to determine whether children have full competence of the (verbal) passive structure. The high percentage of accuracy in the comprehension of sentences containing venire suggests that the eventive passive interpretation is fully available in child language, even in 3- to 4-year-old children. Moreover, young children produce passive sentences with either auxiliary venire or essere “to be,” also adding the by-phrase, thus proving unambiguously that children control verbal passive sentences from very early on.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , July 2016 , pp. 901 - 931
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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.)

References

REFERENCES

Allen, S. E. M., & Crago, M. B. (1993). Early acquisition of passive morphology in Inuktikut. InClark, E. V. (Ed.), The Proceedings of the 24th Annual Child Language Research Forum. Stanford: CSLI.Google Scholar
Babyonyshev, M., & Brun, D. (2003). The role of aspect in the acquisition of passive constructions in Russian. Paper presented at GALA, Utrecht.Google Scholar
Baker, M., Johnson, K., & Roberts, I. (1989). Passive arguments raised. Linguistic Inquiry, 23, 219–251.Google Scholar
Becker, M. (2006). There began to be a learnability puzzle. Linguistic Inquiry, 37, 441–456.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Belletti, A. (2014). Notes on passive object relatives. In Svenonius, P. (Ed.), Functional structure from top to toe: The cartography of syntactic structures (Vol. 9, pp. 97–114). Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Belletti, A., & Contemori, C. (2010). Intervention and attraction: On the production of subject and object relatives by Italian (young) children and adults. In Castro, A., Costa, J., Lobo, M., & Pratas, F. (Eds.), Language acquisition and development: Proceedings of GALA 2009 (pp. 39–52). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press.Google Scholar
Bencini, G. M. L., & Valian, V. V. (2008). Abstract sentence representation in 3-year-olds: Evidence from language production and comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language, 59, 97–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, R. A., & Sagi, Y. (1981). Children's word formation and lexical innovations. Hebrew Computational Linguistics Bulletin, 18, 31–62.Google Scholar
Borer, H., & Wexler, K. (1987). The maturation of syntax. In Roeper, T. & Willliams, E. (Eds.), Parameter setting and language acquisition (pp. 123–172). Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chilosi, A. M., & Cipriani, P. (2006). TCGB: Test di comprensione grammaticale per bambini (in collaboration with Giorgi, A., Fazzi, B., & Pfanner, L.). Pisa: Edizioni del Cerro.Google Scholar
Choe, J. (2012). Children seem to know raising: Raising and intervention in child language. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Hawaii.Google Scholar
Ciccarelli, L. (1998). Comprensione del linguaggio, dei processi di elaborazione e memoria di lavoro: Uno studio in età prescolare. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Padua.Google Scholar
Clark, E. (1993). The lexicon in acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, C. (2005). A smuggling approach to the passive in English. Syntax, 8, 81–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Contemori, C., & Belletti, A. (2014). Relatives and passive object relatives in Italian-speaking children and adults: Intervention in production and comprehension. Applied Psycholinguistics, 35, 1021–1053.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Contemori, C., & Garraffa, M. (2010). Comparison of modalities in SLI syntax: A study on the comprehension and production of non-canonical sentences. Lingua, 120, 1940–1955.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crain, S., & Fodor, J. (1993) Competence and performance in child language. In Dromi, E. (Ed.), Language and cognition: A developmental perspective (pp. 141–171). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Crain, S., & Thornton, R. (1998). Investigations in universal grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Crain, S., Thornton, R., & Murasugi, K. (1987). Capturing the evasive passive. Paper presented at the 12th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston.Google Scholar
Demuth, K. (1989). Maturation and the acquisition of Sesotho passive. Language, 65, 56–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Demuth, K. (1990). Subject, topic, and Sesotho passive. Journal of Child Language, 17, 67–84.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Demuth, K., Moloi, F., & Machobane, M. (2010). 3-year-olds’ comprehension, production, and generalization of Sesotho passives. Cognition, 115, 238–251.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dixon, P. (2008). Models of accuracy in repeated-measures designs. Journal of Memory and Language, 59, 447–456.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Driva, E., & Terzi, A. (2008). Children's passives and the theory of grammar. In Gavarro, A. & Freitas, M. J. (Eds.), Language acquisition and development: Proceedings of GALA 2007. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholar Publishers.Google Scholar
Fox, D., & Grodzinsky, Y. (1998). Children's passive: A view from the by-phrase. Linguistic Inquiry, 29, 311–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedmann, N., Belletti, A., & Rizzi, L. (2009). Relativized relatives: Types of intervention in the acquisition of A-bar dependencies. Lingua, 119, 67–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frigeni, C. (2004). “How do you miss your external argument?” Non-active voice alternations in Italian. Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics, 23, 47–94.Google Scholar
Garraffa, M., & Grillo, N. (2008). Canonicity effects as grammatical phenomena. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 21, 177–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, P., & Chafetz, J. (1990). Verb-based versus class-based accounts of actionality effects in children's comprehension of passives. Cognition, 36, 227–254.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Guasti, M. T. (2007). L'acquisizione del linguaggio: Un'introduzione. Milano: Raffaello Cortina Editore.Google Scholar
Håkansson, G., & Hansson, K. (2000). Comprehension and production of relative clauses: A comparison between Swedish impaired and unimpaired children. Journal of Child Language, 27, 313–333.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hendriks, P., & Koster, C. (2010). Production/comprehension asymmetries in language acquisition. Lingua, 120, 1887–2094.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirsch, C., & Wexler, K. (2006). Children's passives and their resulting interpretation. In Deen, K. U., Nomura, J., Schulz, B., & Schwartz, B. D. (Eds.), The Proceedings of the Inaugural Conference on GALANA: University of Connecticut Occasional Papers in Linguistics (Vol. 4). Cambridge, MA: University of Connecticut/MIT.Google Scholar
Horgan, D. (1978). The development of the full passive. Journal of Child Language, 5, 65–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jaeger, T. F. (2008). Categorical data analysis: Away from ANOVAs (transformation or not) and towards logit mixed models. Journal of Memory and Language, 59, 434–446.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jaeggli, O. (1986). Passive. Linguistic Inquiry, 17, 582–622.Google Scholar
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., & Hawkes, R. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 37th Boston University Conference on Language Development online supplement (pp. 1–16). Boston: Boston University.Google Scholar
Maratsos, M. P., Fox, E. C., Becher, J., & Chalkley, M. A. (1985). Semantic restrictions on children's passives. Cognition, 19, 167–191.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Messenger, K., Branigan, H., McLean, J., & Sorace, A. (2009). Semantic factors in young children's comprehension and production of passives. In Chandlee, J., Franchini, M., Lord, S., & Rheiner, G.-M. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Boston University Conference on Language Development. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Messenger, K., Branigan, H., McLean, J., & Sorace, A. (2012). Is young children's passive syntax semantically constrained? Evidence from syntactic priming. Journal of Memory and Language, 66, 568–587.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mills, A. E. (1985). The acquisition of German. In Slobin, D. (Ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition (Vol. 1, pp. 141–254). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Montgomery, J. W., Magimairaj, B., & O'Malley, M. (2008). The role of working memory in typically developing children's complex sentence comprehension. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 37, 331–354.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
O'Brien, K., Grolla, E., & Lillo-Martin, D. (2006). Long passives are understood by young children. In Bamman, D., Magnitskaia, T., & Zaller, C. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 30th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Orfitelli, R. M. (2012). Argument intervention in the acquisition of A-movement. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Pinker, S., Lebeaux, D., & Frost, L. A. (1987). Productivity and constraints in the acquisition of the passive. Cognition, 26, 195–267.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pye, C., & Quixtan Poz, P. (1988). Precocious passives and antipassives in Quiche Mayan. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development, 27, 71–80.Google Scholar
R Development Core Team. (2008). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Retrieved from http://www.R-project.org Google Scholar
Reynolds, C. R., & Bigler, E. D. (1995). TEMA: Test di memoria e apprendimento. Trento: Centro Studi Erickson. Translated from Test of Memory and Learning (TOMAL), PRO-ED, Austin, Texas, 1994.Google Scholar
Rizzi, L. (2004). Locality and left periphery. In Belletti, A. (Ed.), Structures and beyond: The cartography of syntactic structure (Vol. 3, pp. 223–251). Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rizzi, L. (2013). Locality. Lingua, 130, 169–186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rubin, Maraci Coelho de Barros Pereira. (2009). The passive in 3-and 4-year-olds. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 38, 435–446.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sano, T. (2000). Issues on unaccusatives and passives in the acquisition of Japanese. In Otsu, Y. (Ed.), Proceedings of the Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics (Vol. 1, pp. 1–21). Tokyo: Hituzi Shobo.Google Scholar
Snyder, W., & Hyams, N. (2014). Minimality effects in children's passives. Unpublished manuscript, University of Connecticut and UCLA.Google Scholar
Tagliaferro, L. (2011). The comprehension and production of passive sentences in three-to-four year-old children. Venice: Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.Google Scholar
Terzi, A., & Wexler, K. (2002). A-chains and S-homophones in children's grammar: Evidence from Greek passives. In Hirotani, M. (Ed.), Proceedings of NELS 32. University of Massachusetts, Amherst: GLSA.Google Scholar
Verin, L. (2010). Le frasi passive in età prescolare: un test di comprensione e produzione e un'esperienza di lettura ad alta voce. Tesi di laurea magistrale. Venice: Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.Google Scholar
Volpato, F. (2010). The acquisition of relative clauses and phi-features: Evidence from hearing and hearing-impaired populations. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.Google Scholar
Volpato, F., Verin, L., & Cardinaletti, A. (2014). The acquisition of passives in Italian: Auxiliaries and answering strategies in an experiment of elicited production. In Costa, J., Fiéis, A., Freitas, M. J., Lobo, M., & Santos, A. L. (Eds.), New directions in the acquisition of Romance languages: Selected Proceedings of the Romance Turn (Vol. 5, pp. 371–394). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Volpato, F., Verin, L., Tagliaferro, L., & Cardinaletti, A. (2013). The comprehension of (eventive) verbal passives by Italian preschool age children. In Stavrakaki, S., Lalioti, M., & Konstantinopoulou, P. (Eds.), Advances in language acquisition: Proceedings of Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition Conference GALA 2011 Thessaloniki (pp. 243–250). Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Volpato, F., & Vernice, M. (2014). The production of relative clauses by Italian hearing and hearing-impaired children. Lingua, 139, 39–67. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2013.10.010 CrossRefGoogle Scholar