I will argue that if we look at the durative adverbial distribution and the aspectual contrasts a... more I will argue that if we look at the durative adverbial distribution and the aspectual contrasts across the different morphological tense forms in Romance languages, we discover that the homogeneity character of the tense complement plays a fundamental role in tense selection. Italian durative per-adverbials (for) and da-adverbials (since) are found in complementary distribution within atelic predicates, as shown below per-adverbial da-adverbial (1 a) ??È buio per due ore Is-PRES dark for two hours (1 b) È buio da due ore Is-PRES dark since two hours [Presente]
1. Introduction Relative clauses have been extensively studied from several perspectives. Cross-l... more 1. Introduction Relative clauses have been extensively studied from several perspectives. Cross-linguistic research findings indicate a relatively consistent pattern of performance since they show that subject relatives are significantly easier to acquire and process These findings have been interpreted in terms of the length of the dependencies required for subject and object relatives. As shown in the example below, the filler gap dependency in subject relatives is shorter than in object ones:
Different temporal forms can be used to describe one temporal relation (IT: camminava vs. cammino... more Different temporal forms can be used to describe one temporal relation (IT: camminava vs. cammino, walk-past- imperfective vs. walk-past-perfective) ; one form can be used to describe different temporal relations (D: life, walk-past- imperfective vs. walk-past-perfective) ; these relations concern objects not directly perceivable. This can make their acquisition a complicated task. We tested 355 children, 5 years-old, on tense comprehension in 17 languages. Participants watched movies where a protagonist walks along a road performing the same action at different locations (Wagner 2001). The test-questions were of the form: Where V-past? ; Where V-present? ; Where V-future? We found differences across languages (χ2(16)=100.14, p<.0001) and tenses (χ2(16)=100.14, p<.0001) and an interaction between the two (χ2(21)=103.31, p=.0203). These differences concerned past (χ2(5)=53.08, p<.0001) and future (χ2(5)= 57.78, p<.0001) tenses. We argued that children acquire tense earlie...
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 Belletti and Contemori (2010) 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 (Arosio et al. 2011). In this study, we examine whether it also plays a role in production.
The ability to read and extract meaning from a text is of great importance and heavily affects sc... more The ability to read and extract meaning from a text is of great importance and heavily affects scholastic performance and later success in life. However, from 3% to 17% of the children reading is a complex task (rates depend on different definitions of reading disorder and on the language considered in the study; see for instance Lindgren, De Renzi, and Richman, 1985). These children suffer from Developmental Dyslexia (DD), a disorder characterized by difficulties with reading and writing despite age appropriate non verbal cognitive abilities, absence of neurological damage, or adequate educational opportunities. Although DD was once thought to be linked to phonological deficits only, more recent research has shown a more varied set of deficient areas. In fact, children with DD not only show difficulties with morphosyntactic processing (Cantiani, Lorusso, Perego, Molteni, & Guasti, 2015; Rispens & Been, 2007), but also deficits in rhythmic perception and synchronization. Strong asso...
Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
In the last years, researchers and therapists have pinpointed a number of critical aspects in cur... more In the last years, researchers and therapists have pinpointed a number of critical aspects in current speech-language interventions. Several studies have explored the use of technology to overcome these barriers and to support speech-therapy in children with language impairments (e.g. DLD and ASD). In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework for designing linguistic activities (for assessment and training), based on advances in psycholinguistics. Moving from this theoretical framework, we identified a development process - from the UX design to coding of activities – which is based on a novel set of Design Patterns at multiple layers of abstraction. We then put this framework into practice by implementing these patterns into two technological solutions – tablet and robots – and performing an empirical study to evaluate their benefits. Our results, although still preliminary since they assessed only a tablet experimental condition, are promising for extending the identified Design Patterns to other technological solutions.
ABSTRACT Previous research has shown that the production of third-person singular accusative obje... more ABSTRACT Previous research has shown that the production of third-person singular accusative object clitics (3DO clitics) might be taxing in Italian-speaking pre-school children with cochlear implants (CIs). We investigated this topic by assessing 3DO clitic production in 14 children with an average age of 8 years, who had received CI between age 1 and 4. The first goal of the study was to analyze whether school-aged children with CIs exhibit atypical behavior in 3DO clitic production. The second goal was to analyze whether children with CIs are prone to agreement errors in case of gender mismatch between the subject and the 3DO clitic, as has been shown for normal-hearing, typically developing children. To achieve this, we used two tasks in which subject and object clitic grammatical genders were manipulated so that they would or would not match. As for the first goal, the majority of children with CIs had good performance on the clitic tasks. However, some participants’ performance was poor. The pattern of deviant responses differed among the poor performers. We believe that children with CIs showing impairments in 3DO clitic production need careful individual analysis in order to plan effective speech therapy. As for the second goal, children with CIs were more prone to agreement errors in the mismatch condition compared to the match condition; this dimension needs to be considered when assessing and eventually rehabilitating clitic production.
We aim at determining whether 7-year-old Italian-speaking children with Specific Language Impairm... more We aim at determining whether 7-year-old Italian-speaking children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI): (1) have problems with the production of wh- questions; (2) display a subject/object asymmetry in producing which- and who questions; (3) attempt to simplify questions, especially which- questions; (4) have difficulties with movement and verbal agreement in wh- questions. We elicited subject and object who and which NP questions in 10 children with SLI (M = 7;2), in 10 chronological age (CA)-matched controls (M = 7;2) and 10 language-matched controls (M = 5;2). Results showed that (1) children with SLI produced fewer questions than both control groups; (2) a subject/object asymmetry was observed in who questions but not in which NP questions; (3) which NP questions were more problematic than who questions; (4) children with SLI produced more agreement errors and resorted to simplification strategies to avoid wh- question production. Results point to a grammatical deficit due t...
The study investigated morphosyntactic abilities and semantic-pragmatic competence in 24 children... more The study investigated morphosyntactic abilities and semantic-pragmatic competence in 24 children with developmental dyslexia aged 7 -12 years. Morphosyntactic abilities were investgated in a direct object clitic production task, semantic-pragmatic competence in a quantifier comprehension task. Children with dyslexia produced fewer clitics than their age controls and vocabulary controls. Ten children with dyslexia scored less than 1.5 SD below the mean score of an additional group of 89 children of the same age, selected across a range of oral and reading abilities. No difference was found in quantifier comprehension. These findings suggest that a large number of children with dyslexia are likely to be affected by SLI, although not diagnosed, and the authors recommend language assessment, including assessment of clitic production, when children are referred for dyslexia. By capitalizing on theories that see SLI as a deficit in the processing of complex aspects of linguistic relation...
Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and children with Developmental Dyslexia (DD) ha... more Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and children with Developmental Dyslexia (DD) have problems comprehending relative clauses (RCs) and find object RCs more difficult than subject RCs, as do typically developing children. Few studies have compared these groups directly, leaving it unclear whether the problems observed in children with DD are similar to those described in SLI. Work with typically developing children has shown that the comprehension of passive RCs is less challenging than that of object RCs. It is argued that this asymmetry depends on intervention effects as modelized in a Relativized Minimality framework. Since movement is challenging for children with SLI and those with DD, examining and comparing their comprehension of object RCs and passive RCs can broaden our understanding of their language deficits. In fact, both structures involve movement, but the moved element and the movement configuration are different.In our study we investigated the comprehe...
I will argue that if we look at the durative adverbial distribution and the aspectual contrasts a... more I will argue that if we look at the durative adverbial distribution and the aspectual contrasts across the different morphological tense forms in Romance languages, we discover that the homogeneity character of the tense complement plays a fundamental role in tense selection. Italian durative per-adverbials (for) and da-adverbials (since) are found in complementary distribution within atelic predicates, as shown below per-adverbial da-adverbial (1 a) ??È buio per due ore Is-PRES dark for two hours (1 b) È buio da due ore Is-PRES dark since two hours [Presente]
1. Introduction Relative clauses have been extensively studied from several perspectives. Cross-l... more 1. Introduction Relative clauses have been extensively studied from several perspectives. Cross-linguistic research findings indicate a relatively consistent pattern of performance since they show that subject relatives are significantly easier to acquire and process These findings have been interpreted in terms of the length of the dependencies required for subject and object relatives. As shown in the example below, the filler gap dependency in subject relatives is shorter than in object ones:
Different temporal forms can be used to describe one temporal relation (IT: camminava vs. cammino... more Different temporal forms can be used to describe one temporal relation (IT: camminava vs. cammino, walk-past- imperfective vs. walk-past-perfective) ; one form can be used to describe different temporal relations (D: life, walk-past- imperfective vs. walk-past-perfective) ; these relations concern objects not directly perceivable. This can make their acquisition a complicated task. We tested 355 children, 5 years-old, on tense comprehension in 17 languages. Participants watched movies where a protagonist walks along a road performing the same action at different locations (Wagner 2001). The test-questions were of the form: Where V-past? ; Where V-present? ; Where V-future? We found differences across languages (χ2(16)=100.14, p<.0001) and tenses (χ2(16)=100.14, p<.0001) and an interaction between the two (χ2(21)=103.31, p=.0203). These differences concerned past (χ2(5)=53.08, p<.0001) and future (χ2(5)= 57.78, p<.0001) tenses. We argued that children acquire tense earlie...
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 Belletti and Contemori (2010) 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 (Arosio et al. 2011). In this study, we examine whether it also plays a role in production.
The ability to read and extract meaning from a text is of great importance and heavily affects sc... more The ability to read and extract meaning from a text is of great importance and heavily affects scholastic performance and later success in life. However, from 3% to 17% of the children reading is a complex task (rates depend on different definitions of reading disorder and on the language considered in the study; see for instance Lindgren, De Renzi, and Richman, 1985). These children suffer from Developmental Dyslexia (DD), a disorder characterized by difficulties with reading and writing despite age appropriate non verbal cognitive abilities, absence of neurological damage, or adequate educational opportunities. Although DD was once thought to be linked to phonological deficits only, more recent research has shown a more varied set of deficient areas. In fact, children with DD not only show difficulties with morphosyntactic processing (Cantiani, Lorusso, Perego, Molteni, & Guasti, 2015; Rispens & Been, 2007), but also deficits in rhythmic perception and synchronization. Strong asso...
Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
In the last years, researchers and therapists have pinpointed a number of critical aspects in cur... more In the last years, researchers and therapists have pinpointed a number of critical aspects in current speech-language interventions. Several studies have explored the use of technology to overcome these barriers and to support speech-therapy in children with language impairments (e.g. DLD and ASD). In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework for designing linguistic activities (for assessment and training), based on advances in psycholinguistics. Moving from this theoretical framework, we identified a development process - from the UX design to coding of activities – which is based on a novel set of Design Patterns at multiple layers of abstraction. We then put this framework into practice by implementing these patterns into two technological solutions – tablet and robots – and performing an empirical study to evaluate their benefits. Our results, although still preliminary since they assessed only a tablet experimental condition, are promising for extending the identified Design Patterns to other technological solutions.
ABSTRACT Previous research has shown that the production of third-person singular accusative obje... more ABSTRACT Previous research has shown that the production of third-person singular accusative object clitics (3DO clitics) might be taxing in Italian-speaking pre-school children with cochlear implants (CIs). We investigated this topic by assessing 3DO clitic production in 14 children with an average age of 8 years, who had received CI between age 1 and 4. The first goal of the study was to analyze whether school-aged children with CIs exhibit atypical behavior in 3DO clitic production. The second goal was to analyze whether children with CIs are prone to agreement errors in case of gender mismatch between the subject and the 3DO clitic, as has been shown for normal-hearing, typically developing children. To achieve this, we used two tasks in which subject and object clitic grammatical genders were manipulated so that they would or would not match. As for the first goal, the majority of children with CIs had good performance on the clitic tasks. However, some participants’ performance was poor. The pattern of deviant responses differed among the poor performers. We believe that children with CIs showing impairments in 3DO clitic production need careful individual analysis in order to plan effective speech therapy. As for the second goal, children with CIs were more prone to agreement errors in the mismatch condition compared to the match condition; this dimension needs to be considered when assessing and eventually rehabilitating clitic production.
We aim at determining whether 7-year-old Italian-speaking children with Specific Language Impairm... more We aim at determining whether 7-year-old Italian-speaking children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI): (1) have problems with the production of wh- questions; (2) display a subject/object asymmetry in producing which- and who questions; (3) attempt to simplify questions, especially which- questions; (4) have difficulties with movement and verbal agreement in wh- questions. We elicited subject and object who and which NP questions in 10 children with SLI (M = 7;2), in 10 chronological age (CA)-matched controls (M = 7;2) and 10 language-matched controls (M = 5;2). Results showed that (1) children with SLI produced fewer questions than both control groups; (2) a subject/object asymmetry was observed in who questions but not in which NP questions; (3) which NP questions were more problematic than who questions; (4) children with SLI produced more agreement errors and resorted to simplification strategies to avoid wh- question production. Results point to a grammatical deficit due t...
The study investigated morphosyntactic abilities and semantic-pragmatic competence in 24 children... more The study investigated morphosyntactic abilities and semantic-pragmatic competence in 24 children with developmental dyslexia aged 7 -12 years. Morphosyntactic abilities were investgated in a direct object clitic production task, semantic-pragmatic competence in a quantifier comprehension task. Children with dyslexia produced fewer clitics than their age controls and vocabulary controls. Ten children with dyslexia scored less than 1.5 SD below the mean score of an additional group of 89 children of the same age, selected across a range of oral and reading abilities. No difference was found in quantifier comprehension. These findings suggest that a large number of children with dyslexia are likely to be affected by SLI, although not diagnosed, and the authors recommend language assessment, including assessment of clitic production, when children are referred for dyslexia. By capitalizing on theories that see SLI as a deficit in the processing of complex aspects of linguistic relation...
Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and children with Developmental Dyslexia (DD) ha... more Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and children with Developmental Dyslexia (DD) have problems comprehending relative clauses (RCs) and find object RCs more difficult than subject RCs, as do typically developing children. Few studies have compared these groups directly, leaving it unclear whether the problems observed in children with DD are similar to those described in SLI. Work with typically developing children has shown that the comprehension of passive RCs is less challenging than that of object RCs. It is argued that this asymmetry depends on intervention effects as modelized in a Relativized Minimality framework. Since movement is challenging for children with SLI and those with DD, examining and comparing their comprehension of object RCs and passive RCs can broaden our understanding of their language deficits. In fact, both structures involve movement, but the moved element and the movement configuration are different.In our study we investigated the comprehe...
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