Work

The uses of clitic si in Child Italian

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: This paper investigates the different uses of the clitic si in Child Italian. Through a corpus study on spontaneous productions of children aged 1;4-3;4, we check whether all functions of si are realized by children and we give a new perspective from language acquisition to a long-standing debate, namely whether there exists only one type of si or whether there are many different ones. Our results show that Italian children use si productively and adult-like early on, and they produce all its different functions: impersonal, anticausative, true reflexive, and inherent reflexive – although at different rates. We claim that our results support the one si approaches, and the difference in the frequencies of si functions reflects the structural complexity of some structures.

Source: Isogloss Open Journal of Romance Linguistics

DOI: 10.5565/rev/isogloss.597

Authors: Chiara Dal Farra, Silvia Silleresi, Artemis Alexiadou, Uli Sauerland, Maria Teresa Guasti

Institutions: University of Milano-Bicocca, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics

Language: English

Topic: Language Development and Disorders

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: diamond

Funders: European Commission, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, European Research Council

Awards: G2947259324, G434337789, G478736358