Italian L2 Research Articles

Contingency learning and perfective morpheme productivity in L2 Italian: A study on lexeme–morpheme associations with ΔP

Abstract This study utilized unidirectional association score ΔP to track perfective morpheme productivity in longitudinal spoken L2 Italian data. Research questions concerned whether early L2 perfectives were contingent upon telicity of predicates, whether lexeme–morpheme association changed as proficiency increased, and whether distribution of perfectives in the L1 input affected the patterns of morpheme emergence. Results showed that (i) the productive use of the perfective was contingent upon a few, infrequent telic predicates but also upon some actionally underspecified, very frequent general-purpose ones; (ii) a generalized decrease in association scores over time accompanied the productivity of the perfective morpheme; (iii) distribution of perfectives in L2 data did not reflect distribution in the L1 input. The statistical analysis adopted in this study is replicable to other domains where contingency of stem-affix alternations may provide cues for observing the developing L2 grammar

LexITA: A Quick and Reliable Assessment Tool for Italian L2 Receptive Vocabulary Size

Abstract In language and second language acquisition research, it is important to have a measure for tracking the proficiency level of participants. Lexical competence is fundamental for communicative purposes in a given language, and vocabulary tests are a reliable measure to assess lexical proficiency. That is why vocabulary tests have a central role in language proficiency assessment. Although many people study Italian as second language (L2), an easy-to-use vocabulary test to measure lexical proficiency is still missing. In this work, we aim to fill this gap by presenting LexITA, which is an objective, reliable, and quick assessment of Italian receptive vocabulary. LextITA was validated on students of Italian L2 and showed to be a valid measure to assess vocabulary knowledge of L2 speakers spanning different levels of proficiency.

Evaluating Data-Driven Learning Effects in the Italian L2 Classroom Etic and Emic Perspectives Combined

In this article we outline the results of an evaluation of Data-driven learning (DDL) effects in relation to the development of Italian L2 phraseological competence. We do this on the basis on empirical data, by combining an external and objective perspective based on data elicited through a competence test, and an internal and subjective perspective based on data elicited through a student questionnaire. In the first case we refer to etic data, while in the second case we refer to emic data. Overall, the results indicate mild positive effects in terms of etic data, but stronger positive effects in terms of emic data. The article concludes by stressing the importance of combining two perspectives such as the ones adopted in this study, in order to be able to observe some of the many different aspects of educational effectiveness within a single, integrated framework.

Corpora for Linguists vs. Corpora for Learners Bridging the Gap in Italian L2 Learning and Teaching

This paper aims to shed light on how research findings stemming from Learner Corpus Research (LCR) can inform the development of Data-driven learning (DDL) pedagogical activities. By doing this, it seeks to show how the gap between corpora built to be used by linguists and those tailored for learners can be filled. It starts by defining what a corpus is and how second language learning studies can benefit from the research findings based on corpora, but also from the direct use of corpora in the classroom. Then, it provides an overview of the available native and learner corpora of Italian, and how corpora in general can be adapted for DDL purposes. Finally, it describes an example of how an LCR finding can be used to develop DDL activities. It concludes with some desiderata for the future.

Learning to assign stress in a second language: The role of second-language vocabulary size and transfer from the native language in second-language readers of Italian

AbstractLearning to pronounce a written word implies assigning a stress pattern to that word. This task can present a challenge for speakers of languages like Italian, in which stress information must often be computed from distributional properties of the language, especially for individuals learning Italian as a second language (L2). Here, we aimed to characterize the processes underlying the development of stress assignment in native English and native Chinese speakers learning L2 Italian. Both types of bilinguals produced evidence supporting a role of vocabulary size in modulating the type of distributional information used in stress assignment, with an early bias for Italian's dominant stress pattern being gradually replaced by use of associations between orthographic sequences and stress patterns in more advanced bilinguals. We also obtained some evidence for a transfer of stress assignment habits from the bilinguals’ native language to Italian, although only in English native speakers.

Revision Strategy and Self-Diagnosis in Italian L1 and L2 Argumentative Essays

The present study investigates the effects of Revision Strategy (RS) on Argumentative Essay (AE) writing. Specifically, the study provides an analysis of 58 short AEs written by L1 and L2 university students. Two different levels of errors are examined: linguistic (Spelling, (Morpho)syntax, Lexicon, Syntax, Punctuation) and structure (Text structure and Coherence) errors, in order to measure how RS influences the texts. The comparison between RS and non-RS samples shows a significant difference in favour of texts with RS. In fact, we can surmise that RS positively influences text production both in L1 and L2 writing. In the third section we provide a quantitative analysis of the errors and we find some common issues within the specific rhetorical and linguistic framework of AE.

Metaphorical language processing and amygdala activation in L1 and L2

The present study aims to investigate the neural correlates of processing conventional figurative language in non-native speakers in a comparison with native speakers. Italian proficient L2 learners of German and German native speakers read conventional metaphorical statements as well as literal paraphrases that were comparable on a range of psycholinguistic variables. Results confirm previous findings that native speakers show increased activity for metaphorical processing, and left amygdala activation increases with increasing Metaphoricity. At the whole-brain level, L2 learners showed the expected overall differences in activation when compared to native speakers (in the fronto-temporal network). But L2 speakers did not show any distinctive activation outside the caudate nucleus as Metaphoricity increased, suggesting that the L2 speakers were less affected by increasing Metaphoricity than native speakers were. With small volume correction, only a single peak in the amygdala reached threshold for L2 speakers as Metaphoricity increased. The findings are consistent with the view that metaphorical language is more engaging for native speakers but not necessarily for L2 speakers.

How do bilingual dyslexic and typically developing children perform in nonword repetition? Evidence from a study on Italian L2 children

AbstractNonword repetition is typically impaired in dyslexia. Conversely, native-like performance is early achieved by bilingual children whose second language has a simple phonotactic system, like Italian. Our study aimed at comparing the performance of monolingual and bilingual children with and without dyslexia in a nonword repetition task modeled after Italian. We assessed nonword repetition in 111 school-aged children: 24 Italian L2 bilingual dyslexics, 24 Italian monolingual dyslexics, 30 Italian L2 bilingual controls and 33 Italian monolingual controls. We administered an original task composed of 40 nonwords ranging from two to five syllables; the complexity of the syllables was also manipulated. Results showed that both groups of dyslexics underperformed controls at each syllable length. No differences were found between monolingual and bilingual controls. Conversely, bilingual dyslexics underperformed monolingual dyslexics only with four-syllable nonwords. The possible use of nonword repetition tasks to assist in the identification of dyslexia in bilingual children is also discussed.

Plurililngualism and Intercomprehension in an Italian SL Classroom of Adult Migrants From the Vehicular Language to the Bridge-Language

This article reflects on how to activate and capitalise on adult migrant learners’ plurilingual repertoires through intercomprehension in the Italian L2 classroom. Firstly, two survey results with adult migrant learners and teachers of Italian as L2 are discussed so as to show how plurilingual practices are perceived and activated by both parties. Secondly the article discusses how studies on the intercomprehension between related languages and on the role of English as a bridge language towards Romance languages can be usefully applied in the given learning context in order to enhance the metalinguistic awareness of learners and develop teachers’ ability to capitalize their language repertoires in the teaching of the target language.

The Acquisition of Italian Discourse Markers as a Function of Studying Abroad

This paper investigates the effect of a period of study in Italy on the use of discourse markers (DMs) by Belgian–Dutch learners of Italian as a second language (L2). We recorded dialogical exchanges between 8 Belgian–Dutch learners of L2 Italian, before and after an Erasmus exchange of 6 months in an Italian university. The results of our investigation reveal that, both pre- and post-Erasmus, the most used DMs are si ‘yes’, ok, allora ‘so, then’, quindi ‘then, therefore’, dunque ‘therefore’, be’ ‘well’. Our research also shows that the main effect of the period of study abroad is the increased variation of the pragmatic functions of DMs used by the L2 speakers. Whereas before the Erasmus, DMs are employed almost exclusively with an interactional function, after the Erasmus their spectrum of functions is broaden to cognitive and the meta-discursive functions. Interestingly, we also observe that after the Erasmus, some DMs are used with different non-target functions: we argue that these uses must be analyzed as interferences with the learners’ language background. We conclude the paper with some remarks on the effect of the period of study abroad on L2 fluency, analyzing the clustering of DMs with filled pauses.

Emerging Constructions in the L2 Italian Spoken by Low Literate Migrants

The emergence of autonomous interlanguage constructions is widely recognised in the literature on L2 Italian. These constructions involve the overgeneralisation of functional forms learners are in the process of acquiring, e.g., siamo in siamo mangiare ‘be:1PL eat:INF’ (target Italian: mangiamo ‘eat:1PL’); facciamo in facciamo cucinare ‘do:1PL cook:INF’ (target Italian: cuciniamo ‘cook:1PL’); per in piaciare per uscire fuori ‘like:INF for go:INF out’ (target Italian: mi piace uscire fuori ‘to.me like:3SG go:INF out’. ‘Be’/‘do’ forms are assigned a morphosyntactic function to convey temporal/aspectual/person information instead of inflecting the verb, while per ‘for’ is a generic subordinating marker. Based on new corpus data, I claim that such constructions may correlate with a learners’ degree of first language (L1) literacy. In detail, and consistent with, both literate and non-literate learners overgeneralise functional forms while working on the newly acquired morphosyntax; this shows that the non-literates are perfectly able to subconsciously identify functional forms in the input. Non-literates, however, show a stronger tendency than literates to select lexical-syntactic sub-patterns.

Anaphora resolution in L1 Italian in a Swedish-speaking environment before and after L1 re-immersion: A study on attrition

This study investigates whether L1 attrition effects on anaphora resolution decrease with L1 re-immersion. A group of 20 Italian-Swedish late bilinguals was tested once before and once after their summer vacation in Italy, and compared with a control group of 21 Italian monolinguals that was also tested once before and once after a similar time interval. Both groups assigned overt and null pronouns to a subject or an object antecedent in a self-paced comprehension task. The results of the study suggest that attrition affects null pronouns, an outcome inconsistent with previous findings wherein attrition effects were limited to Italian overt pronouns (e.g., Tsimpli et al., 2004). This outcome supports the hypothesis that attrition affects processing rather than representations. Moreover, in the second session, both groups improved in terms of antecedent assignment and response times. This finding suggests a task effect rather than a re-immersion effect.

Caratteristiche prosodiche del discorso simultaneo in italiano L2. Confronto con l’arabo e l’italiano L1

Abstract – This work presents pragmatic and prosodic analysis of elicited conversations (Find the difference and Map Task) in three ‘varieties’: Cairene Arabic, Italian (Variety of Naples) and Italian L2 of native speakers of Cairene Arabic. The analyses aim to collect data about conversational interaction in Italian L2, about the role of prosody in conversations in L2, and in particular to discover how speakers deploy prosodic resources to develop a conversation among frequent overlaps. For the pragmatic aspect, the model of Bazzanella (1994) has been used to classify overlaps. Then, the measurement of f 0 and intensity has been conducted on the collected segments of overlaps. It has been found that certain types of overlaps present higher pitch and loudness, but not only because of the overlapping. Rather, competition for the turn and addition of new information have some influence on parameters. Transfer from L1 is not proved here to be a feature of overlaps in L2.

Implicit Learning, Bilingualism, and Dyslexia: Insights From a Study Assessing AGL With a Modified Simon Task.

This paper presents an experimental study investigating artificial grammar learning in monolingual and bilingual children, with and without dyslexia, using an original methodology. We administered a serial reaction time task, in the form of a modified Simon task, in which the sequence of the stimuli was manipulated according to the rules of a simple Lindenmayer grammar (more specifically, a Fibonacci grammar). By ensuring that the subjects focused on the correct response execution at the motor stage in presence of congruent or incongruent visual stimuli, we could meet the two fundamental criteria for implicit learning: the absence of an intention to learn and the lack of awareness at the level of resulting knowledge. The participants of our studies were four groups of 10-year-old children: 30 Italian monolingual typically developing children, 30 bilingual typically developing children with Italian L2, 24 Italian monolingual dyslexic children, and 24 bilingual dyslexic children with Italian L2. Participants were administered the modified Simon task developed according to the rules of the Fibonacci grammar and tested with respect to the implicit learning of three regularities: (i) a red is followed by a blue, (ii) a sequence of two blues is followed by a red, and (iii) a blue can be followed either by a red or by a blue. Results clearly support the hypothesis that learning took place, since participants of all groups became increasingly sensitive to the structure of the input, implicitly learning the sequence of the trials and thus appropriately predicting the occurrence of the relevant items, as manifested by faster reaction times in predictable trials. Moreover, group differences were found, with bilinguals being overall faster than monolinguals and dyslexics less accurate than controls. Finally, an advantage of bilingualism in dyslexia was found, with bilingual dyslexics performing consistently better than monolingual dyslexics and, in some conditions, at the level of the two control groups. These results are taken to suggest that bilingualism should be supported also among linguistically impaired individuals.

Teachers’ Perception of Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom An Empirical Study on Italian FL and L2 Teachers

Motivation can determine success or failure in second language learning process, however there is a limited number of published investigations dedicated to motivational strategies in a European context. The purpose of the present study is to replicate Cheng’s and Dörnyei’s (2007) research to test the validity of their findings in a different cultural milieu. 101 foreign language (FL) and second language (L2) teachers were asked to rate a list of 47 motivational strategies according based on the degree of importance they perceived. In addition, they were also invited to specify how they acquainted with each strategy. The results of the study suggest that, even though the use of motivational strategies is decidedly context-dependent, the prevailing importance of some strategies might be cross-cultural. In particular, strategies related to classroom climate could also be considered as preconditions to employ further strategies. The highest-rated strategies are also indicated as acquired mostly through experience, which highlights the far too little attention that motivational strategies have so far received in education programmes for the formation of language teachers.

Does pragmatic beat syntax? Evidence from focus accent placement in the semi-spontaneous speech of Italian learners of German

In this paper, we investigate the prosodic marking of information structure by Italian L1 learners of German. We analyze two different contexts with non-final focus accents, i. e. narrow and broad focus contexts, mainly on sentence level while most studies discussing post-focal de-accentuation are restricted to noun phrases. For Italian learners, non-final placement of focus accents is likely to cause problems, given that in their L1, phonetic prominence is normally as-signed to the last constituent in the verbal phrase. Our initial hypothesis was that the hypothetical "cognitive universal" requiring de-accentuation of given elements might probably guide the learners in realizing the correct pitch contour in contexts with a non-final narrow focus (and pragmatic de-accentuation of the final given constituent). By contrast, the de-accentuation of phrase-final lexical verbs in broad focus contexts was expected to cause more problems given that this typologically marked syntactic structure does not exist in Italian. However, in a previous study based on read speech, de-accentuation of final given elements was managed by inter-mediate Italian learners of German L2 only slightly better than realizing a non-final focus accent in all new contexts on the argument in OV structures (success rate of 55% vs. 48%, with no statistically significant difference). In other words, both types of non-final focus accents seem to be balanced at this intermediate stage of acquisition. In this contribution, our goal is to discover whether in semi-spontaneous speech one can find the same distributional patterns of non-final focus accents in this learner variety of Italian learners of German. To this end, we analyzed recordings of oral exams from the same 10 Italian university students that had taken part in the previous study. The analysis shows that in semi-spontaneous speech production too, there is evidence for the hypothesis that pragmatics does not "beat" syntax in prosodic acquisition. Besides, when the two different data types were compared, a very high intra-speaker correlation emerged between read and semi-spontaneous speech.

Lexical access and competition in bilingual children: The role of proficiency and the lexical similarity of the two languages

Using a picture–auditory word recognition task, we examined how early child bilinguals access their languages and how the languages affect one another. Accuracy and response times in “false friends” (i.e., words with similar form but unrelated meanings) and semantically related words were compared with control conditions within and across languages and grades. Study 1 tested the performance of school-age children with balanced versus unbalanced knowledge of first-language (L1) Italian and second-language (L2) German. Study 2 compared unbalanced bilingual children with L1 Italian and L2 French or German to investigate the effect of lexical similarity in the children’s languages. Children were found to activate both languages on receiving an auditory stimulus; performance in each language was affected by proficiency in the other language, degree of between-language similarity, and length of experience with each language. The BLINCS (Bilingual Language Interactive Network for Comprehension of Speech) model was invoked as a plausible framework for conceptualizing the nature of bilingual phonolexical representation and its effect on word recognition.

Strategie discorsive in spagnolo L1 ed L2 a confronto: un’indagine su corpora dialogici

According to previous studies on L1 Italian and Spanish, speakers prefer different pragmatic strategies and adopt specific pragmatic patterns to express their attention to the interlocutor. This study deals with communicative strategies used in dialogic speech in L1 and L2 Spanish considering both textual structure and interaction between the two interlocutors. More in detail, the aim of this research is to analyse how speakers introduce and manage Discourse Topics in order to compare the behaviour of native and non-native Spanish speakers. The study examines two corpora of task-oriented dialogues, the corpus DiESPA, of Peninsular Spanish L1 ?collected in different geographic areas? and the corpus DiELE-(I), of Spanish L2 –collected in the University of Salerno with Italian learners of a CEFR level B2-C1. The analysis of Discourse Topics introduction and management allows defining crucial textual characteristics and defining speakers’ attitudes towards interlocutors. From a qualitative and a quantitative analysis, which examines the percentage of occurrences of pragmatic moves used by native and non-native speakers, it emerges that differences in native speakers and L2 learners’ strategic choices used to complete the task are due to their limited linguistic competence, especially grammatical and lexical, rather than to pragmatic and cultural factors.

Journeys/Viaggi: Intertwined multi-university English L2 and Italian L2 courses for bilingual and intercultural growth

Abstract The University of Florence’s Language Center (CLA) and the Florence seat of an American university renowned for its language programs, Middlebury College, twice intertwined their English and Italian B2/C1 foreign language courses to produce an English/Italian reciprocal learning space. In addition to disparate organizational constructs, the two institutions had slightly differing goals. Both institutions sought multiple, peer-speaking opportunities; however, in addition, Middlebury aimed for intercultural exchange with local peers. To achieve these multiple objectives, our joint courses included elements of group work, collaborative learning, and the latter’s language-acquisition offspring, task-based learning. Research drawn from the fields of management, psychology, pedagogy, sociology, and translation studies, in addition to second language acquisition, guided our instructional design choices. Students worked together outside the classroom, co-constructing knowledge in increasingly complex tasks, to produce tangible outcomes. These joint activities provided students with a space to confront their interpretations and expectations of the L2 culture with an insider’s view. Students experimented with simultaneous, sequential and reciprocal bilingualism. In the second edition of the course, Spanish L1 speakers were present in both universities, co-constructing their knowledge multilingually. The article describes the courses’ format, activities and hurdles, for those interested in setting up bilingual lessons, as well as citing germane studies from a variety of academic disciplines which guided course design.

L'italiano L2 e le regole che non si insegnano a scuola

A number of topics in Italian L2 grammar are notoriously difficult to acquire, even for students with an overall good level of proficiency. Some constructions are clearly ungrammatical; others sound odd and betray a non-native use of the form. This paper examines two of such examples − the use of definite determiners with plural nouns in (preverbal) subject position and the alternation of null and overt subject pronouns − and it compares and combines insights from generative grammar and rules of normative grammar taught in school. The aim of this approach is twofold: First, to understand why these constructions may be difficult to acquire for a second language learner. Second, to encourage awareness about variation in language and to provide new insights for second language teaching.