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Opis: Several studies investigated preschoolers’ ability to compute scalar and ad-hoc implicatures, but only one compared children’s performance with both kinds of implicature with the same task, a picture selection task. In Experiment 1 (N = 58, age: 4;2-6;0), we first show that the truth value judgment task, traditionally employed to investigate children’s pragmatic ability, prompts a rate of pragmatic responses comparable to the picture selection task. In Experiment 2 (N = 141, age: 3;8-9;2) we used the picture selection task to compare scalar and ad-hoc implicatures and linked the ability to derive these implicatures to some cognitive and linguistic measures. We found that four- and five-year-olds children performed better on ad-hoc than on scalar implicatures. Furthermore, we found that morphosyntactic competence was associated with success in both kinds of implicatures, while performance on mental state reasoning was positively associated with success on scalar but not ad-hoc implicatures.
Najdeno v: ključnih besedah
Povzetek najdenega: ... acquisition of pragmatics, scalar implicatures, ad-hoc implicatures, experimental...
Ključne besede: acquisition of pragmatics, scalar implicatures, ad-hoc implicatures, experimental pragmatics
Objavljeno: 17.09.2021; Ogledov: 1036; Prenosov: 0
Polno besedilo (1,13 MB)

Opis: In our globalized and multi-cultural society, communicating between different nationalities becomes more and more important. Language remains a paramount aspect of cultural dialogue and English as lingua franca is the undisputed medium of communication, taught everywhere at an early age. In Italy English is taught since elementary school, sometimes even in kindergarten, when children’s linguistic abilities are stronger; however, teachers usually fail to make the most out of such abilities, as their lessons are primarily in Italian and the use of English is limited to some words or expressions targeted by exercises. With such an input, the children’s progress is likely to be limited. My experiment attempts to assess the interaction student-teacher in terms of use of L2 in class by means of a comparative analysis of two middle-school lessons taught by the same teacher to different age groups. Moreover, teacher’s correction techniques will be assessed in the light of frameworks established by scholars in this field, where the positive value of errors in the development of children interlanguage emerges with clarity. Since feedback is an essential part of education, special attention was paid to the teacher’s behavior in dealing with student’s mistakes. Two entire lessons were recorded and transcribed, counting the numbers of words and turns uttered respectively by students and the teacher. When collected and analyzed, such data exhibited both similarities and differences between classes. On the teacher’s side, both lessons revealed that she adopts a rather conservative style of teaching, with limited interaction. As a result, the lessons are to be considered teacher-oriented, for the distribution of turns and the amount of words exchanged; conducted along the textbook’s lines, they offer very limited room for creative language production. Moreover, the teacher’s tendency to steadily correct the students, with the only exception of pronunciation errors, impairs student’s communicative fluency at large. However, a certain progress may be observed between the 1st and 3rd class in both the increased command of English and the number of errors, decreased by almost 50%. In both cases, though, the production of English sentences is creative only for a minimal part, as English is often read and lessons are mostly based on the correction of homework and written exercises. In conclusion, the experiment offers data that confirm several assumptions of contemporary linguistics, particularly in the field of Second Language Acquisition and Error Analysis.
Najdeno v: ključnih besedah
Povzetek najdenega: ...particularly in the field of Second Language Acquisition and Error Analysis....
Ključne besede: Second Language Acquisition, Error Analysis, Italian, English as L2
Objavljeno: 22.09.2021; Ogledov: 1094; Prenosov: 0
Polno besedilo (612,48 KB)

Opis: This thesis investigates the production and acquisition of prosodic contours in Italian learners of German, and German learners of Italian as second languages (L2). The thesis compares speech production in L2 with speech production in the native language (L1). The goal is to verify whether the speech production in L2 is affected by Transfer phenomena that are linked to the phonological properties of the L1. The thesis also tests, in light of the Markedness Differential Hypothesis, whether the direction of acquisition - the acquisition of German as L2, being an L1 speaker of Italian vs. the acquisition of Italian as L2, being an L1 speaker of German – can predict a production in L2 connotated by Foreign Accent (FA). The thesis describes: i) the current state of the art of acquisitional theories of an L2 in adulthood; ii) the theoretical description of the patterns of prosodic prominence in Italian and German within the Autosegmental Theory of Intonation framework; iii) the interaction of the phonological structure with the Information Packaging of the Discourse Structure that differently affects the realization of prosodic patterns in Germanic and Romance languages. Finally, the thesis reports the preliminary results of a production experiment that adopts the paradigm of Swerts et. al (2002) in which participants utter a sequence of Noun-Phrases composed by a Noun and Adjective in which the Information Status rotates between the conditions of New, Given, and Contrastive information. The data highlight the presence of H+L* as the most frequently used Pitch Accent in the production of Italian speakers, that emerges also in the production of the German L2 speakers of Italian; in contrast, the data show the presence of Deaccentuation in the production of L1 speakers of German in correlation with the Given information status of a referent that is not successfully acquired by Italian L1 speakers of German as L2. The data indicate that it appears to be easier to successfully acquire the Italian prosodic system, being a native speaker of German, than vice-versa, supporting the MDH. The facilitatory effect is explainable by the less relevant role of the Discourse Structure in guiding the prominence patterns in Italian, which more heavily relies on the phonological structure, resulting in a less marked prosodic system compared to the prosodic system of German.
Najdeno v: ključnih besedah
Povzetek najdenega: ...This thesis investigates the production and acquisition of prosodic contours in Italian learners of...
Ključne besede: pitch accents, prosody, foreign accent, prominence, second language acquisition, german, Italian, markedness, speech production
Objavljeno: 06.12.2021; Ogledov: 1024; Prenosov: 0
Polno besedilo (151,40 KB)

Opis: Germanic and Romance languages differ in the way they assign prosodic prominence within the domain of the utterance in the discourse structure. Italian relies on the hierarchical phonological structure and assigns the prosodic prominence to the metrical head on the right. On the other hand, German assigns prominence combining both the phonological structure and the pragmatic information, considering the degree of activation of a specific referent. Referents that have not been previously mentioned introduce New information in the discourse. New information is marked with prominent pitch patterns. On the contrary, referents that have been already mentioned are cognitively activated in the mind of the hearer and they represent Given information. Given information has been proven to be most frequently deaccented in Germanic languages. In this study, we show that native speakers of Italian, Second Language learners of German, show to have difficulties in the acquisition of the Deaccentuation pattern, and are affected by prosodic transfer from their L1. The L1 prosodic system not being sensitive to the pragmatic cues can assign prominence on a metrical head even if the referent is Given within Discourse. On the contrary, we show that native speakers of German, learning Italian as a second language show to acquire more easily the prosodic pattern of Italian.
Najdeno v: ključnih besedah
Povzetek najdenega: ...German, show to have difficulties in the acquisition of the Deaccentuation pattern, and are affected...
Ključne besede: Pitch Accents, Prosody, L2 acquisition, Transfer, Given Information, Deaccenting, German, Italian
Objavljeno: 12.01.2022; Ogledov: 824; Prenosov: 0
Gradivo ima več datotek! Več...

Najdeno v: ključnih besedah
Ključne besede: Prosody, Information Status, L2 intonation, Deaccentuation, German, Italian, L2 Acquisition
Objavljeno: 14.12.2021; Ogledov: 847; Prenosov: 0
Gradivo ima več datotek! Več...