Language Competence in Italian Heritage Speakers
The Contribution of Clitic Pronouns and Nonword Repetition
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5899913 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Giuditta Smith (0000-0002-9358-5700, University of East Anglia), Roberta Spelorzi (University of Edinburgh), Antonella Sorace (0000-0002-8812-1979, University of Edinburgh), Maria Garraffa (0000-0003-1767-424X, University of East Anglia, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 180 |
| Publication date | 2022-07-11 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Languages (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2226-471X • E-ISSN: 2226-471X |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/languages7030180 |
| OpenAlex | W4285042524 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 67 |
The linguistic profile of bilingual children is known to show areas of overlap with that of children affected by Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), creating a need to differentiate the profiles and provide clinicians with tools to evaluate bilingual speakers in both of their languages. Data from typical adult bilinguals provide a picture of the language of a bilingual speaker at the end of language development. The present work explores how clitic production and nonword repetition (NWR) behave in mature language systems in situations of bilingualism, aiming to provide initial data as a benchmark on Italian as a non-dominant language. Heritage speakers (HSs) of Italian were confronted with adult immigrants (AIs) who moved from Italy to an English-speaking country in adulthood. Clitic pronouns were found to be vulnerable in HSs, who produced approximately 35% of the target clitics against the 80% of Ais, suggesting that clitic pronouns may not be reliable structures to test language competence in heritage Italian. On the other hand, HSs were >97% correct in NWR, suggesting that this paradigm should be explored as a possible marker to test language competence in these populations
Clitic · Competence (human resources · Heritage language · Linguistic competence · Linguistics · Neuroscience of multilingualism · Language Development and Disorders · Multilingual Education and Policy · Psychology · Reading and Literacy Development
Heritage Languages and Their Speakers
The Acquisition of Heritage Languages
Children with Specific Language Impairment
Assessing Multilingual Children
Incomplete Acquisition in Bilingualism
Reanalysis in Adult Heritage Language
Syntactic transfer in a Cantonese–English bilingual child
Prevalence of Specific Language Impairment in Kindergarten Children
Nonword Repetition and Child Language Impairment
Bilingual first language acquisition at the interface between syntax and pragmatics
Toward Tense as a Clinical Marker of Specific Language Impairment in English-Speaking Children
Crosslinguistic influence and language dominance in older bilingual children
The typology of structural deficiency
Understanding heritage languages
Working memory and language
Crosslinguistic influence in bilingual language acquisition
Crosslinguistic influence at the syntax–pragmatics interface
PsychoPy2
The Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (Leap-Q)
The Oxford Handbook of Language Attrition
L1 versus Dominant Language Transfer Effects in L2 and Heritage Speakers of Italian
Between syntax and discourse
Effects of age and education on variable but native heritage grammars
Terminology matters! Why difference is not incompleteness and how early child bilinguals are heritage speakers
Understanding the nature and outcomes of early bilingualism
Specific Language Impairment and Early Second Language Acquisition
Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of Italian
Development of the first language in the human species
Pinning down the concept of "interface" in bilingualism
Heritage languages and their speakers
Hungarian Language Contact Outside Hungary
Null and overt subjects in Italian and Spanish heritage speakers in Germany
Clitic pronoun production as a measure of atypical language development in French
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1.5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2025 (2) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |