Noun-Noun utterances in Child Italian

Starting date
January 1, 2012
Duration (months)
24
Managers or local contacts
Melloni Chiara
Keyword
acquisition, syntax, prosody, antisimmetry

This research project targets noun-noun combinations produced by children in the two-word stage of language acquisition. Methodology: We intend to monitor the production of 16 Italian children from 1;7 to 2;1 (Calambrone, D’Odorico, Klammler, Roma and Tonelli corpora, CHILDES). After isolating a sufficient number of NNCs, we aim to perform a three-steps analysis: i) conceptual/semantic: each NNC has to be labeled on the basis of which semantic relation links the two nouns; ii) syntactic: for each NNC we indicate whether it is an instance of a head+modifier or modifier+head schema; iii) phonological: the prosodic contour of the utterance is studied with specific attention to the presence of pauses and properties of the main stress. Main Goal: we wish to disentangle the factors at play in the production of such noun utterances and shed light on the emergence of syntax at very early stages of language acquisition. Participants: Chiara Melloni (Università di Verona) & Jacopo Torregrossa (Università di Verona / Università di Cologna) Funding: FUR (Fondo dipartimentale Unico per la Ricerca), con previsione di spesa di circa 1500 euro per partecipazione a convegni.

Project participants

Chiara Melloni
Associate Professor

Collaboratori esterni

Jacopo Torregrossa
Università di Cologna Assegnista di ricerca (Post-doc)
Publications
Title Authors Year
English compounds in Child Italian Jacopo, Torregrossa; Melloni, Chiara 2014

Activities

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