Annonce CONFERENCE: 26 juin 2012 14h-16h Prof. Ludovica Serratrice, Manchester University

[Edy Veneziano]

Chers collègues,

nous avons le plaisir de vous inviter à la conférence
du Prof. Ludovica Serratrice 
Manchester University

La conférence 
"Cues to the acquisition of transitive constructions in Italian " 
se tiendra
le mardi 26 juin à 14h
à la Sorbonne
54, rue Saint-Jacques 
75005 PARIS 
Salle F673 (Galerie Gerson, escalier G2, 1er étage).

Résumé de la conférence 
"Cues to the acquisition of transitive constructions in Italian " 
Some have claimed that Italian two-year-olds do not utilise morphosyntax as a cue to semantic roles in causal events (Bates, MacWhinney, Caselli, Devescovi, Natale & Venza, 1984). In two studies I analyse what evidence in the input could guide children in figuring out agents and patients in causative transitives (Study 1), and which cues children pay attention to in understanding who does what to whom in an experimental context (Study 2).

In Study 1 I analysed 13229 verb-containing utterances in Italian to establish which sentence frames Italian children actually hear in child-directed-speech (CDS) when both the subject and the object are overtly expressed. The three most frequent frames in the corpus were Subject-Verb-Object (Noun-Verb-Noun), Subject-Object-Verb (N-Object Clitic-Verb), and Object-Verb-Subject (Object Clitic-Verb-Noun).

In study 2, Italian preschoolers (2;1, 2;6, 3;6 and 4;6) heard transitives with novel verbs in the three most frequent word orders found with overt subjects and objects in CDS. For each trial they chose between two video clips (e.g., horse acting on cat versus cat acting on horse). 2½-year-olds only pointed above chance (70%) with SOV. Only the 4½-year-olds pointed above chance (78%) with SVO.  All age groups pointed at chance for OVS. 

The findings are discussed in terms of cue competition between the predominant Verb-Noun and Object-Clitic-Verb frames used to express Italian active transitives.


Très cordialement,



Edy Veneziano
Professeur des Universités
Institut de Psychologie
Université Paris Descartes-CNRS, MoDyCo, UMR 7114
http://www.modyco.fr/veneziano










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