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SUMMARY:Features disambiguation in the comprehension and production of chi
 ldren's complex structure - Maria Teresa Guasti (Università di Milano Bic
 occa)
DTSTART:20080422T150000Z
DTEND:20080422T163000Z
UID:TALK11493@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Napoleon Katsos
DESCRIPTION:I show that production of object wh-questions poses a challeng
 e to Italian-speaking children\, as comprehension does\, according to De V
 incenzi et al. (1999). The apparent contrast with the claim that Italian-s
 peaking children produce target-like wh-questions from the age of 2 and a 
 half (Guasti\, 1996) disappears once we identify the locus of the difficul
 ty. In a nutshell\, Italian-speaking children have troubles when they have
  to move an argument (the object) over another (the subject) that shares t
 he same feature and this is reflected in the process of valuing the Agr fe
 atures associated to the verb (see Guasti and Rizzi\, 2002\, Franck et al.
  2006). Movement becomes unproblematic once the features of the two NPs ar
 e differentiated and this can be achieved in different ways. This proposal
  can be extended to account for the fact that in Italian object relative c
 lauses with the OSV order (like in English) are easier to comprehend than 
 those with OVS (with a postverbal subject) (Arosio\, Guasti and Adani\, in
  print)\; OVS object relative clauses are misunderstood and are taken as s
 ubject relative clauses. \n\n     Based on an elicited production study wi
 th 4-5 year old children and adults\, I show that children produce less ob
 ject questions in (1) than adults and less object questions than subject q
 uestions\, in (2). Rather than object\, they produce subject questions or 
 irrelevant responses. In addition\, the object questions that they produce
  take different forms. More frequently\, they display the order S Wh V or 
 occur with a null subjects and lastly they display the order WH V S. In ad
 dition\, which questions are harder than who questions. \n\n   1. Chi rinc
 orrono i cani? Who chase-3PL the dogs? (= Who are the dogs chasing?)\n   2
 . Chi rincorre i cani   Who chase-3SG the dogs?\n
LOCATION:GR-06/07\, English Faculty Building
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