Clitic production in Italian agrammatism


I am currently finalizing a project on clitic production in Italian agrammatism. The aim of the project has been to analyze the production of pronominal clitics in spontaneous speech, and in several experimental settings in a group of agrammatic speakers and a group of non-brain damaged speakers.

Specific goals of the project were to analyze the production of both direct and indirect object clitics in different sentential contexts. The first one, represented by affirmative and negative indicative sentences, which is an obligatory context, in that the position of the clitic is obligatorily pre-verbal, and the second one, represented by so called ‘restructuring contexts’ (following the definition of Rizzi, 1982), is an optional context in that clitics can optionally be produced before or after the verbal complex. Examples of these two contexts are given below:

Obligatory context:

1.
  a. Eleonora la mangia
     Eleonora it eats

  b. Eleonora non le da la mela
      Eleonora not her gives the apple

 Optional context:

2.
 a. Eleonora la vuole mangiare
     Eleonora it wants to eat

 b. Eleonora vuole mangiarla
     Eleonora wants to eat it

 

Moreover, the production of clitics in the context of affirmative and negative jussive sentences was analyzed. This is interesting in that the position of the clitic differs between the two conditions. In an affirmative jussive sentence, the position of the clitic is obligatorily post-verbal , whereas in negative jussive sentences of the clitic is again optional, i.e. pre-verbal or post-verbal, as shown in the next examples.

3.
a. Mangiala!
    Eat it!

4.
a. Non mangiarla!
    Not eat it!

b. Non la mangiare!
    Not it eat!

Results and discussion over this fascinating topic can be found in my thesis which will be online very soon!

 
Participants:
Drs. Eleonora Rossi
Prof.  Dr. Roelien Bastiaanse (project supervisor)




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