Academic literature on the topic 'Maggese (The Italian word)'

Modern linguistics is currently replete with competing theories, all with differing goals and intentions. This is not an altogether desirable situation. The aim of this thesis is to develop one of these theories, namely Word Grammar (Hudson 1984a), with this in mind. After an exposition of the theory, which should leave the reader with a clearer idea of the workings of the theory of Word Grammar, I will be concerned to put the intuitions behind the theory on as formal a footing as possible. This will involve the development of yet another formalism. However, this formalisation will involve the use of standard techniques. Extensions to the grammar, where necessary, shall be made with devices now current in the field such as Unification. In such a way, I hope to bring Word Grammar more into line with other formalisms, thus aiding a convergence rather than a divergence of theories. As part of the test for this new formalism it will then be applied to the problem of clitic placement in Italian.

The current study assessed the effects of two teaching stimulus presentations, i.e. picture to word and word to word, used to teach second language vocabulary to college students. It also evaluated the emergence of untaught relations when picture to word and word to word were used separately as a teaching strategy. The findings showed picture to word training resulted in more untaught relations. Several aspects such time allotted for online quizzes, experimental and teaching arrangements and vocabulary complexity were suggested for future research.

This thesis investigates the morphological, orthographic and semantic features affecting the word reading process in Italian primary-school children and at the same time the different reading units which young readers are able to rely on. In Chapter 1, an overview on reading models and on studies showing a complex scenario of results has been proposed. In Chapter 2, a pseudoword reading task has been carried out in order to provide evidence of a lexical reading in Italian children that can be based on whole-word representations. In Chapter 3, we aimed at presenting a morphological-oriented coding scheme of reading errors performed by Italian children in a morphologically complex words reading. This analysis showed reliability on morphemic structure when children read morphologically complex words, and their ability to use morphemes as intermediate grain size reading units. Chapters 4 and 5 presented a new measure, the Orthography-Semantics Consistency (OSC), quantifying the consistency of the orthographic and semantic information carried in a word, and moving from the hypothesis that orthographic-semantic associations, even if they are not morpheme-mediated, play a crucial role in word reading process over and above morpheme units. In order to validate OSC measure from a developmental point of view, a morphological masked priming task and a simple lexical decision task have been first performed by a group of English children, as OSC measure was validated on English language data only (Chapter 4), and then by a group of Italian children (Chapter 5).

Le présent travail porte sur l'organisation du lexique mental chez les locuteurs natifs et non natifs de l’italien et vise à déterminer si les mots sont connectés selon des critères morphologiques, c'est-à-dire à travers un réseau d'associations qui s’établissent lorsqu’une cooccurrence de forme et de sens est reconnue. La recherche psycholinguistique sur l'accès lexical natif a démontré que l'organisation du lexique mental est largement fondée sur paramètres morphologiques, même si des controverses subsistent quant au locus de ce niveau d'organisation. Par contre, la recherche dans le domaine de l'acquisition des langues secondes s'est tournée vers l'étude de ces questions seulement récemment et ses conclusions ont jusqu'ici été relativement controversées. Plus précisément, la question se pose de savoir si les locuteurs natifs et non natifs partagent les mêmes systèmes de traitement des mots morphologiquement complexes. Selon des propositions récentes (Heyer &amp; Clahsen 2015), ce ne serait pas le cas puisque le traitement de la L2 serait davantage affecté par des critères formels que morphologiques. Dans cette perspective, le présent travail vise à vérifier l'impact des caractéristiques formelles dans l'accès lexical natif et non natif en se focalisant sur le traitement des mots formellement transparents par rapport aux mots non-transparents en italien<br>The present work focuses on the organization of the mental lexicon in native and non-native speakers and aims at investigating whether words are connected in the mind in terms of morphological criteria, i.e., through a network of associations establishing when a co-occurrence of form and meaning is found. Psycholinguistic research on native lexical access has demonstrated that morphology indeed underlies the organization of the mental lexicon, even though controversies about the locus of this level of organization remain. On the other hand, research in the field of second language acquisition has only recently turned to investigate such issues and its findings so far have been controversial. Specifically, the debate centers on whether native and non-native speakers share the same processing systems. According to recent proposals (Heyer &amp; Clahsen 2015), this would not be the case and L2 processing would be more affected by formal rather than morphological criteria. In this light, the present work is aimed at verifying the impact of formal characteristics in native and non-native lexical access focusing on the processing of formally transparent versus non-transparent words in Italian

Le parole funtori e i morfemi flessivi sono parole che non hanno un significato indipendente ma sono molto frequenti e solitamente monosillabiche. Tra queste, possiamo trovare articoli, pronomi clitici, suffissi. Trasmettono informazioni grammaticali e strutturali e sono un aiuto critico nell'elaborazione del linguaggio. Sebbene ricerche precedenti abbiano dimostrato che i neonati sono sensibili alle parole funzione fin dai primi mesi di vita, gli studi sulla loro sensibilità e produzione in italiano sono scarsi. Questa tesi si propone di studiare la sensibilità e la produzione dei bambini italiani agli articoli e ai clitici complemento oggetto (3DO). Questa scelta è motivata dal fatto che questi due morfemi, soprattutto i clitici 3DO sono critici nell’identificare bambini monolingui e bilingui con disturbi del linguaggio. Nel Capitolo 3 abbiamo studiato la sensibilità precoce agli articoli e ai clitici 3DO. Registrando i movimenti oculari, abbiamo analizzato se i bambini di 12 mesi distinguevano tra articoli veri e pseudo-articoli e se i bambini di 20 mesi distinguevano tra clitici veri e pseudo-clitici. I risultati hanno mostrato che, per quanto riguarda gli articoli, i bambini distinguevano tra articoli veri e pseudo, preferendo guardare lo schermo quando sentivano un articolo vero. Inoltre, già a 12 mesi di età, i bambini italiani avevano acquisito sia gli articoli definiti che quelli indefiniti. Nessun risultato significativo è emerso con i clitici 3DO a causa, probabilmente, della metodologia utilizzata. I Capitoli 4 e 5 hanno approfondito l'uso di un morfema flessivo sugli articoli, il genere, nel processamento linguistico. Abbiamo dimostrato, attraverso un compito di Looking While Listening, che i bambini di 12 mesi potevano estrarre le informazioni di genere contenute negli articoli per predire i nomi che li seguivano (Capitolo 4). Infine, le registrazioni ERP hanno mostrato che i bambini di 24 mesi potevano rilevare una violazione di genere tra un'immagine e la frase associata già quando sentivano che l'articolo non corrispondeva all'immagine presentata: hanno mostrato una positività posteriore molto precoce (Capitolo 5). Infine, abbiamo studiato la produzione dei clitici 3DO presentando un utile test computerizzato per lo screening della produzione dei clitici 3DO sia nei bambini a sviluppo tipico (TD) che nei bambini con Disturbo Primario del Linguaggio (DPL). Il test ha avuto una buona sensibilità nell'identificare i bambini con DPL. Inoltre, questo test ha mostrato risultati interessanti nella popolazione bilingue: sebbene i bambini che acquisiscono l'italiano come seconda lingua fatichino nella produzione dei clitici 3DO, i bambini bilingui TD hanno ottenuto risultati altrettanto buoni dei coetanei monolingui al test (Capitolo 6). Infine, abbiamo approfondito lo studio della produzione dei clitici 3DO analizzando le differenze nella produzione dei proclitici e degli enclitici in bambini dai 4 ai 7 anni con e senza familiarità per disturbi del linguaggio e dell'apprendimento (LLI). I risultati hanno mostrato che gli enclitici erano più facili da produrre a tutte le età. Inoltre, i bambini con una storia familiare positiva per LLI hanno prodotto meno clitici rispetto ai bambini senza familiarità, soprattutto a 4 e 5 anni.<br>Function words and inflectional morphemes do not have an independent meaning but are highly frequent and usually monosyllabic. Among these, we could find articles, clitic pronouns, nominal and verbal suffixes. They convey structural information and are a critical aid in language acquisition and processing. Although previous research has demonstrated that infants are sensitive to function words from their first months of life, studies on their sensitivity and production in Italian are scarce. This thesis aims to study the sensitivity and production of Italian infants and toddlers to articles and 3rd direct object (3DO) clitics. This choice is motivated by the fact that these two morphemes are critical in the detection of language problems, especially 3DO, in monolingual and bilingual children. Chapter 3 investigated the early sensitivity to articles and 3DO clitics. By recording eye movements, we analysed whether 12 months old infants distinguished between real and pseudo-articles and whether 20 months old toddlers distinguished between real and pseudo-clitics. Results showed that, concerning the articles, infants distinguished between real and pseudo articles, preferring to look at the screen when they heard a real article. Moreover, at already 12 months of age, Italian infants had acquired both definite and indefinite articles. No significant results emerged with 3DO clitics due, probably, to the methodology used. Chapters 4 and 5 deeply investigated the use of an inflection morpheme, gender, on articles in language processing. Through a Looking While Listening task, we showed that infants as young as 12 months could extract the gender information carried by articles to anticipate the upcoming noun (Chapter 4). Finally, ERP recordings showed that children as young as 24 months old could detect a gender violation between a picture and the associated sentence already when they heard that the article did not match the picture presented: they showed a very early posterior positivity (Chapter 5). Finally, we studied the production of 3DO clitics by presenting a helpful computerised test for screening the production of 3DO clitics both in the typical developing (TD) children and in children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). The test had a good sensitivity in identifying children with DLD. Moreover, this test showed interesting results in the bilingual population: although children who acquire Italian as a second language struggle with the acquisition of 3DO clitics, TD bilingual children performed as well as monolingual peers at the clitic test (Chapter 6). Finally, we have deepened the study of 3DO clitics’ production by analysing the differences in the production of proclitics and enclitics in children aged 4 to 7 years with and without familiarity with language and learning impairments (LLI). Results showed that enclitics were easier to produce at all ages. Moreover, children with a positive family history for LLI produced fewer clitics than children without familiarity, especially at 4 and 5 years.

<p>The purpose of this dissertation is to study the fantastic in the tales of the Italian children’s author Gianni Rodari. This analysis is grounded in the hypothesis that the fantastic is primarily characterized by two <i>esthetic qualities</i>, play and lightness, both of which are manifested at different levels in these texts, as well as in the relation between children and adults.</p><p>As a background for the textual analysis in the present work, an introductory review is provided of previous research, followed by a historical and theoretical consideration of fantastical children’s literature, together with a study of Rodari’s own relation to the fantastic. For previous research, the results clearly indicate an arbitrary relationship to Rodari’s texts, such that the fantastic is admittedly recognized, but is often confused with the fairy-tale. However, the present review of the history of Italian fantastical literature for children indicates that Rodari is writing in a fantastical and humorous tradition that begins with <i>Pinocchio</i>, a tradition that is <i>inter alia </i>characterized by its ability to bridge the gap between children’s and adult literature. Based on theoretical definitions of the fairy-tale (Propp, Thompson, Lüthi) and the fantastic (Todorov, Rabkin, Jackson, Held), the present work presents its own model for the study of Rodari’s texts, which are also compared with the author’s own poetics,<i> The Grammar of Fantasy.</i></p><p>A narratological analysis of a tale with both a children’s and an adult version (in itself an example of <i>crosswriting</i>) demonstrates that the fantastic and the humoristic are given freer rein when Rodari is writing for children. This appears to be linked to his concept of the child as the ideal reader, a reader primarily defined by an open and unprejudiced attitude to literature, rather than by age <i>per se</i>. The dissertation’s study of play and lightness (lack of weight) clearly confirms the hypothesis that these elements are a major component of the fantastic in Rodari’s texts; the results nevertheless indicate that play dominates on the level of language, and lightness on that of content.</p><p>One of the most important results of this dissertation is that Rodari’s texts, in addition to possessing certain stylistic characteristics, do not demonstrate any deeper similarities to fairy tales. Instead, the author’s tales share numerous characteristics with the traditional concept of the fantastic such as a clear reaction to the supernatural element, and a particular interest in both the material nature of language and existential liminal regions. At the same time, the results indicate several specific characteristics that distinguish the fantastic in Rodari from that which is written for adults, such as its explicit grounding in the child’s everyday existence and imaginative world, as well as its backgrounding of frightening aspects, with prominence instead being given to playfulness.</p>

The goal of this thesis is to analyze the textual composition of René Goscinny’s Astérix and Le petit Nicolas, demonstrating how they differ and why. Taking a statistical look at the comparative qualities of each series of works, the structural differences and similarities in language use in these two series and their respective media are highlighted and compared. Though one might expect more complicated language use in traditional text by virtue of its format, analysis of average word length, average sentence length, lexical diversity, the prevalence of specific forms (the passé composé, possessive pronouns, etc.), and preferred collocations (ils sont fous, ces romains !) shows interesting results. Though Le petit Nicolas has longer sentences and more relative pronouns (and hence more clauses per sentence on average), Astérix has longer words and more lexical diversity. A similar comparison of the albums of Astérix written by Goscinny to those of Uderzo, paying additional attention to the structural elements of each album (usage of narration and sound effects, for example) shows that Goscinny's love of reusing phrases is far greater than Uderzo's, and that the two have very different ideas of timing as expressed in narration boxes.

Os prefixos germânicos de alguns verbos suecos serão comparados numa análise contrastiva com as relativas equivalências em português e em italiano num corpus paralelo escrito composto por um romance de língua sueca, um de língua portuguesa e um de língua italiana e pelas suas respectivas traduções. As funções desenvolvidas pelos prefixos germânicos dos verbos suecos analisados serão examinadas e depois confrontadas com as relativas equivalências, com o resultado que também nas duas línguas românicas relevam-se, de maneira bastante constante, procedimentos gramaticais parecidos aos desenvolvidos pelos prefixos germânicos.<br>Germanic prefixes of which some Swedish verbs are composed are going to be compared in acontrastive analysis with their relative equivalences in Portuguese and Italian in a parallel written corpus characterized by a Swedish-language romance, a Portuguese-language romance and an Italian language romance, and by their relative translations. The functions executed by the German prefixes of the analysed Swedish verbs are going to be examined and then compared with their relative equivalences, with the result that even in the Romance languages it is possible to find in a quite constant way grammatical processes which are similar to those executed by the Germanic prefixes.<br>I prefissi germanici di alcuni verbi svedesi saranno comparati in un'analisi contrastiva con le relative equivalenze in portoghese e in italiano in un corpus parallelo scritto composto da un romanzo di lingua svedese, uno di lingua portoghese e uno di lingua italiana e dalle rispettive traduzioni. Le funzioni svolte dai prefissi germanici dei verbi svedesi analizzati saranno esaminate e poi confrontate con le relative equivalenze, con il risultato che anche nelle due lingue romanze si riscontrano in maniera abbastanza costante processi grammaticali simili a quelli svolti dai prefissi germanici.<br>De germanska prefix som återfinns i vissa svenska verb kommer att jämföras med sina motsvarigheter på portugisiska och italienska. Detta görs med hjälp av en skriven korpus bestående av en roman ursprungligen skriven på svenska, en skriven på portugisiska och en skriven på italienska samt översättningar av dessa romaner till de två andra språken. Funktionen hos de svenska verben med germanska prefix kommer att analyseras och sedan jämföras med verbens motsvarigheter. Resultatet av analysen visar att det är möjligt att finna systematiskt återkommande grammatiska processer i de romanska språken, som liknar de som förekommer i samband med de germanska prefixen på svenska.