Lo squilibrio nell'acquisizione di due lingue nell'infanzia

Författare

Petra Bernardini

Summary, in English

This thesis treats the acquisition of Italian (and Swedish) in two bilingal children ad a control group of six monolingal Italian cildren (for some domains studied). It is a longitudinal study of the spontaneaous speech of the children. In both children one language is weaker than the other in terms of MLU, amount of utterances and code-mixing while speeking with an interlocutor of the respective language. The input in the two languages is also considered as a factor that may have an impact on which language becomes the weaker one.

The thesis treets the development of the determiner phrase (nouns, adjectives, articles and possessive pronouns) as well as code-mixing and transfer, within the theory of generative grammar.

The results show for instance that:

-some domains of morpho-syntax are more vulnerable to transfer than others (i.e. determiners are not but adjectives are)and that this is more evident in the weaker language;

- the weaker language has a different developmental path than the stronger language in the acquisition of adjectives;

Avdelning/ar