Papers by Maria Teresa Guasti
Null AUX and the acquisition of residual V2
ABSTRACT
Journal of Multivariate Analysis
We investigate the production of subject and object who-and which-questions in the Italian of 4to... more We investigate the production of subject and object who-and which-questions in the Italian of 4to 5-year-olds and report a subject/object asymmetry observed in other studies. We argue that this asymmetry stems from interference of the object copy in the AGREE relation between AgrS and the subject in the Spec of the verb phrase. We show that different avoidance strategies are attempted by the child to get around this interference, all boiling down to a double checking of agreement: AGREE and Spec-Head. Then, we evaluate our approach from a cross-linguistic perspective and offer an account of the differences observed across early languages. Because our account seems to call both for a grammatical and a processing explanation, we end with a critical discussion of this dichotomy.
These studies assess the 'limited capacity theory' of Specific Language Impairment (SLI) by asses... more These studies assess the 'limited capacity theory' of Specific Language Impairment (SLI) by assessing the influence of processing capacity limitations on syntactic comprehension in children with SLI.
Dyslexic children fail to comply with the rhythmic constraints of handwriting
Human movement science, Jan 30, 2015
In this study, we sought to demonstrate that deficits in a specific motor activity, handwriting, ... more In this study, we sought to demonstrate that deficits in a specific motor activity, handwriting, are associated to Developmental Dyslexia. The linguistic and writing performance of children with Developmental Dyslexia, with and without handwriting problems (dysgraphia), were compared to that of children with Typical Development. The quantitative kinematic variables of handwriting were collected by means of a digitizing tablet. The results showed that all children with Developmental Dyslexia wrote more slowly than those with Typical Development. Contrary to typically developing children, they also varied more in the time taken to write the individual letters of a word and failed to comply with the principles of isochrony and homothety. Moreover, a series of correlations was found among reading, language measures and writing measures suggesting that the two abilities may be linked. We propose that the link between handwriting and reading/language deficits is mediated by rhythm, as bot...
Analytic Causatives
The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, 2006
1 Introduction 2 The syntax of Romance causatives 2.1 Distributional properties of the infinitive... more 1 Introduction 2 The syntax of Romance causatives 2.1 Distributional properties of the infinitive's subject 2.2 Syntactic processes in causative constructions 2.2.1 Causatives based on transitive verbs 2.2.1.1 Clitic placement 2.2.1.2 Passivization and NP movement 2.2.2 Causatives ...
What accounts for children non-adultlike linguistic behaviour?
Journal of Child Language, 2004
Psicologia Clinica Dello Sviluppo, Aug 1, 2013
A 19 bambini (5-9 anni) con una storia pregressa di Disturbo Specifico del Linguaggio (DSL), è st... more A 19 bambini (5-9 anni) con una storia pregressa di Disturbo Specifico del Linguaggio (DSL), è stato somministrato un breve test di screening delle abilità morfo-sintattiche e fonologiche per l'età prescolare in corso di standardizzazione per l'italiano. Tale test rappresenta un adattamento di un analogo test inglese già standardizzato (GAPS; Gardner, Froud, McClelland e Van der Lely, 2006) e comprende una prova di ripetizione di frasi ed una di ripetizione di non parole. Entrambe le prove esaminano aspetti del linguaggio che sono particolarmente problematici per i bambini con DSL, cioè dei marcatori clinici del DSL. Oltre a questo aspetto, l'interesse di questo test è dato dal fatto che è breve (10 minuti) e può essere somministrato da chiunque, sia professionisti che non professionisti, compresi i genitori. La prestazione dei DSL nei compiti di ripetizione di frasi e di non-parole è stata confrontata con quella di tre gruppi di controllo PSICoLoGIA CLInICA DeLLo SvILuPPo / a. XVII, n. 2, agosto 2013
Syntactic breakdown and recovery of clausal structure in agrammatism
Brain and Cognition, 2002
We studied the recovery of clause structures in four agrammatic patients by performing a longitud... more We studied the recovery of clause structures in four agrammatic patients by performing a longitudinal analysis of their spontaneous production. We classified their utterances in terms of legitimacy of the syntactic structure and rate of subordination. The results show that, initially, patients omit verbs, avoid subordination, just employ present tense, and substitute finite verbs with infinitives. During the recovery they start employing other tenses and subordinate clauses and reduce the use of infinitives. Data suggest a mixed syntactic and morphological origin of the impairment. Assuming that phrasal representations are built bottom-up from an array of lexical items, we propose that syntactic structures recover stepwise, with the lower portion of the syntactic tree becoming accessible before higher portions. We claim that, despite superficial similarities between agrammatic and children's speech, e.g., use of infinitives instead of finite verbs, a unified account is not viable.
Revue Roumaine de Linguistique
Semantic interfaces: References, anaphora and aspect. Dedicated to Andrea Bonomi on the occasion of his 60th birthday
Developmental Dyslexia With and Without Language Impairment: ERPs Reveal Qualitative Differences in Morphosyntactic Processing
Developmental Neuropsychology, 2015
This study aimed to characterize neuropsychological and linguistic skills in children with Develo... more This study aimed to characterize neuropsychological and linguistic skills in children with Developmental Dyslexia (DD) with and without Language Impairment (LI). Behavioral tests of short-term memory, phonemic awareness, and morphosyntactic processing and electrophysiological responses to agreement violations were administered to 32 DD children (16 with additional LI) and 16 controls. Behavioral data revealed quantitative differences among groups: DD+LI children showed the worst performance, followed by DD-only children and controls. Event-related potential results confirmed atypical morphosyntactic processing in the DD-only group, highlighting qualitative differences between groups. These results support multifactor models of learning disabilities, where different patterns of deficits characterize different subgroups.
In this paper, we aim at exploring the subject/object asymmetry by comparing the production of re... more In this paper, we aim at exploring the subject/object asymmetry by comparing the production of relative clauses by two groups of Italian children aged 5 and 9 years respectively. By focusing on quite different ages, we aim at providing some additional information about the development of object relative clauses. We will do so by using a different experimental set up than the one used in and this might be the source of different outcomes and be revealing of some additional factor promoting the production of object relative clauses endowed with peculiar features. In most studies, subject and object relatives include reversible verbs with two animate arguments. Animacy has been claimed to play a role in the comprehension of object relative clauses by children . In this study, we examine whether it also plays a role in production.
Semantics and Linguistic Theory, 2015
Journal of Child Language, 2012
contributed to test design, data collection and analysis, and writing up; they are listed alphabe... more contributed to test design, data collection and analysis, and writing up; they are listed alphabetically. Maria Lobo contributed to test design as well as data collection and analysis. The rest of the authors provided descriptions of the pronominal systems in the languages tested, translated the experimental materials into their own language, or contributed to collection and analysis of their own language data; they are listed alphabetically.
The acquisition of Chinese relative clauses: contrasting two theoretical approaches
Journal of child language, Jan 9, 2015
This study examines the comprehension of relative clauses by Chinese-speaking children, and evalu... more This study examines the comprehension of relative clauses by Chinese-speaking children, and evaluates the validity of the predictions of the Dependency Locality Theory (Gibson, 1998, 2000) and the Relativized Minimality approach (Friedmann, Belletti & Rizzi, 2009). One hundred and twenty children from three to eight years of age were tested by using a character-sentence matching task. We found a preference for subject relative clauses that persists as children grow older. This preference is predicted by the Relativized Minimality approach, but not by the Dependency Locality Theory. In addition, we observed a fine-grained class of errors in comprehension. We discuss it in the light of the head-final status of Chinese relative clauses.
Syntactic breakdown and recovery of clausal structure in agrammatism
Brain and cognition
We studied the recovery of clause structures in four agrammatic patients by performing a longitud... more We studied the recovery of clause structures in four agrammatic patients by performing a longitudinal analysis of their spontaneous production. We classified their utterances in terms of legitimacy of the syntactic structure and rate of subordination. The results show that, initially, patients omit verbs, avoid subordination, just employ present tense, and substitute finite verbs with infinitives. During the recovery they start employing other tenses and subordinate clauses and reduce the use of infinitives. Data suggest a mixed syntactic and morphological origin of the impairment. Assuming that phrasal representations are built bottom-up from an array of lexical items, we propose that syntactic structures recover stepwise, with the lower portion of the syntactic tree becoming accessible before higher portions. We claim that, despite superficial similarities between agrammatic and children's speech, e.g., use of infinitives instead of finite verbs, a unified account is not viable.
Children's production of head-final relative clauses: The case of Mandarin
Applied Psycholinguistics, 2015
Uploads
Papers by Maria Teresa Guasti