Emerging Constructions in the L2 Italian Spoken by Low Literate Migrants
Abstract
:1. Introduction: Literacy in New Migration and the Status of the Research
(1) | Auxiliary construction | |
siamo | mangiare | |
be:1PL | eat:INF | |
‘We are eat.’ | ||
mangiamo | (target form) | |
eat:1PL | ||
‘We eat.’ |
(2) | Light verb construction | |
facciamo | cucinare | |
do:1PL | cook:INF | |
‘We do cook.’ | ||
cuciniamo | (target form) | |
cook:1PL | ||
‘We cook.’ |
(3) | Preposition construction | ||||
piaciare | per | uscire | fuori | ||
like:INF | for | go:INF | out | ||
‘To like for go out.’ | |||||
mi | piace | uscire | fuori | (target form) | |
to.me | like:3SG | go:INF | out | ||
‘I like to go out.’ |
- ICs involve overgeneralisation of functional forms belonging to closed lexical classes; learners identify these forms in the input as elements conveying grammatical meanings and overextend them to non-target contexts.
- This means that, when ICs emerge, learners must have already entered a “grammatical” phase of second language acquisition.
- Both literate and low-/non-literate learners develop ICs while working on acquiring new structures; this shows that not only literate but also low- and non-literate learners are able to subconsciously identify functional words in the input.
- Learners may favour this due to the specific status of function words, which are more transparent than bound morphemes both at the phonological and at the semantic levels.
- In general, non-literates show a stronger tendency to select lexical-syntactic sub-patterns.
2. LESLLA Studies
- (1)
- the cognitive perspective, inspired by the findings of psycholinguistic experimental studies on phonological awareness and working memory (cf. the research conducted by Tarone and colleagues since the early 2000s);
- (2)
- the linguistic paradigm, represented by the Organic Grammar (OG), a weak continuity generativist approach (Vainikka and Young-Scholten 1998, 2007; Vainikka et al. 2017; Young-Scholten and Strom 2006).
3. The Path(s) of Development of L2 Italian
(4) | Io | parla | tre | lingua | |
I | speak:BASIC FORM7 | three | lingua:SG | ||
io | parlo:1SG | tre | lingue:PL | (target form) | |
‘I speak three languages.’ | (ItaStra LESLLA Corpus) |
- Different columns represent different paths of developments that are related but not necessarily dependent on each other; in other words, it may be the case that one path develops more slowly than another, as in the case of the acquisition of person markers. These markers emerge immediately after the first aspectual opposition perfective vs. non-perfective, but they stabilise much more slowly than temporal-aspectual markers (Banfi and Bernini 2003, p. 95).
- It follows from 1 that a category should be considered acquired even if the form in which it is encoded does not perfectly reflect the target form; e.g., io era ‘be:IPFV.3SG, I was’ (target form: io ero) reflects the acquisition of the imperfective past tense of ‘to be’, but not that of the grammatical person. In other words, the acquisition of a grammatical category does not correspond automatically to the acquisition of the whole target morphology.
- Even within the same column, a category first appears in individual forms, rather than involving the entire paradigm; e.g., the imperfect tense generally emerges as individual forms of ‘to be’ (era, ero) and only later it spreads to other verbs (Andorno 2006).
(5) | [parlare | italiano]TOPIC | [poco, | no tutti]FOCUS | ||
speak:INF | Italian | a little, | not all | |||
parlo | poco | italiano, | non molto | (target form) | ||
‘I speak Italian a little, not much.’ | (ItaStra LESLLA Corpus) |
4. Previous Studies on Interlanguage Constructions
4.1. Non-Target Analytical Constructions
(6) | Lui | era | ha | una | macchina | ||
he | be:IPFV.3SG | have:BASIC FORM | a | car | |||
lui | aveva | una | macchina | (target form) | |||
have:IPFV.3SG | |||||||
‘He had a car.’ |
- pseudo-present verbal forms, as ha in 6 (other examples are: ero sono ‘I’m was > I was’; era si chiama ‘he was he is called > it was called’; avevo credo ‘I had I think > I thought’);
- infinitives, e.g., sono studiare ‘I am to study > I study’;
- unanalysed constructions, e.g., sono sto facendo ‘I am I’m doing > I’m doing’, siamo non ha fatto ‘we are (he) didn’t do > we didn’t do’;
- nouns, e.g., siamo partenza ‘we are departure > we leave/are leaving’, sono paura ‘I am fear > I’m afraid’).
(7) | sono | andato | a casa | |
be:1SG | go:PST.PTCT | to home | ||
‘I went home.’ |
4.2. Non-Target Subordinating Markers
5. The Italian LESLLA Corpus: Participants and Data Collection12
- Group 1: no literacy (not able to read or write isolated words in any writing system).
- Group 2: low literacy (recognition of letters, in the Roman or other alphabets; slow deciphering of a few isolated words; writing his own name).13
- Group 3: literacy.
- Session 1 included a preliminary interview, aimed at collecting biographic and sociolinguistic information, and the ItaStra literacy test.
- Session 2, took place a few days after and included: a) a wordless video (adapted from the web) which learners had to retell; the video showed in parallel the actions carried out by two persons, a man and a woman, during a day; and b) a set of images on paper representing daily events that learners had to select to talk about a day in the past. The tasks were aimed at eliciting data on the presence of the verb and the encoding of temporal-aspectual and person information.
- Session 3 was carried out after about six months. Learners were asked to talk about their life in Palermo, focusing on an event or a person. This task aimed at eliciting the same linguistic phenomena as Session 2 after a certain timespan.
- Session 4 took place after another four months and included a conversation about the learners’ life between the third and the fourth sessions and the retelling of Chafe’s film The Pear (Chafe 1980).
- Session 5 took place after another three months and included tasks performed in Sessions 1 to 4, namely a semi-guided conversation, the retelling of the video used in Session 2, the retelling of The Pear film.
6. Data analysis and Results
6.1. Sessions 1 and 2
(8) | BD2 | io | poi | fatto | lavare | |
I | then | do:PST.PTCP | wash:INF | |||
poi | mi | sono | lavato | (target form) | ||
then | myself | be:1SG | wash: PST.PTCP.M.SG16 | |||
‘I then washed myself.’ |
(9) | MF2 | fare | tirare | tenda | ||
do:INF | stretch:INF | curtain | ||||
ha | aperto | la | tenda | (target form) | ||
have:3SG | open:PST.PTCP | the | curtain | |||
‘He raised the curtain.’ |
(10) | MT2 | ha | fatto | pulire | denti | |
have:3SG | do:PST.PTCP | clean:INF | teeth | |||
si | è | lavato | i denti | (target form) | ||
himself | be:3SG | brush:PST.PTCP.M.SG | the teeth | |||
‘He brushed his teeth.’ |
(11) | INT | la ragazza, | cos’ | ha | fatto? | |
the girl | what | has | done | |||
‘What did the girl do?’ | ||||||
MT2 | ha | fatto | mangiare, | anche | ||
have:3SG | do:PST.PTCP | eat:INF | also | |||
ha | fatto | prende | libro | |||
have:3SG | do:PST.PTCP | take:3SG | book | |||
ha | mangiato | |||||
have:3SG | eat:PST.PTCP | |||||
ha | preso | anche | un libro | (target form) | ||
have:3SG | take:PST.PTCP | also | a book | |||
‘She ate; she also took a book.’ |
(12) | MD2 | non | è | continua | a | lavorare | |
not | be:3SG | continue:INF | to | work:INF | |||
non | ho | continuato | a | lavorare | (target form) | ||
not | have:1SG | continue:PST.PTCP | to | work:INF | |||
‘I didn’t keep working.’ |
(13) | MD2 | non | è | lavorare | più | |
not | be:3SG | work:INF | anymore | |||
non | ho | lavorato | più | (target form) | ||
not | have:1SG | work:PST.PTCP | anymore | |||
‘I have not worked anymore.’ |
(14) | YS2 | non | è | rimarci | per sempre | |
not | be:3SG | remain:INF | forever | |||
non | rimarrò | qui | per sempre | (target form) | ||
not | remain:FUT.1SG | here | forever | |||
‘I will not remain here forever.’ |
6.2. Session 3
(15) | MT3 | ho | fatto | con | mio amico | passeggiare |
have:1SG | do:PST.PTCP | with | my friend | walk:INF | ||
ho | passeggiato | con | un mio amico | (target form) | ||
have:1SG | walk:PST.PTCP | with | a my friend | |||
‘I went for a walk with my friend.’ |
(16) | BD3 | domeniga | anche | poi | siete | un po’ | legliere | |
Sunday | also | then | be:2PL | a bit | read:INF | |||
domenica | poi | ho | letto | un po’ | (target form) | |||
Sunday | then | have:1SG | read:PST.PTCP | a bit | ||||
‘Sunday, then, I also read a bit.’ |
(17) | YS3 | adesso | sono | estudiato | CPIA | |
now | be:1SG | study:PST.PTCP | CPIA | |||
adesso | studio | al CPIA | (target form) | |||
now | study:1SG | at CPIA | ||||
‘Now I study at the CPIA.19’ |
(18) | MD3 | poi | un altro scuola | ma | |||
then | another school | but | |||||
non | è | ricorda | nome | ||||
not | be:3SG | remember:3SG | name | ||||
poi | un’altra scuola | ma | (target form) | ||||
then | another school | but | |||||
non | ricordo | il nome | |||||
not | remember:1SG | ||||||
‘Then another school, but I can’t remember the name.’ |
(19) | BD3 | A Palermo | per | vivere | non | è | facile | |
at Palermo | for | live:INF | not | be:3SG | easy | |||
a Palermo | non | è | facile | vivere | (target form) | |||
at Palermo | not | be:3SG | easy | live:INF | ||||
‘It’s not easy to live in Palermo.’ |
(20) | CO3 | Io | no | ci | piace | come | guardare | |
I | not | to.us | like:3SG | as | look:INF | |||
non | mi | piace | guardar=lo | (target form) | ||||
not | to.me | like: 3SG | watch:INF=it | |||||
‘I do not like to watch it.’ |
(21) | INT | Che cosa | fai | a | Palermo? | ||
what | do:2SG | at | Palermo | ||||
CO3 | Come | andare | scuola, | vedere | una persona | ||
as | go:INF | school | see:INF | a person | |||
vado | a scuola | vedo | persone | (target form) | |||
go:1SG | to school | see:1SG | person:PL | ||||
‘What do you do in Palermo?’ ‘I go to school, I see people.’ |
6.3. Session 4
(22) | SM4 | Tre | persone | vai | andare | giocare | |
Three | persons | go:2SG | go:INF | play:INF | |||
tre | persone | vanno | a | giocare | (target form) | ||
three | person:PL | go:3PL | to | play:INF | |||
‘Three persons go to play.’ |
(23) | MC4 | Loro | sto | camminando | avanti | |
they | stay:1SG | walk:GER | on | |||
loro | stanno | camminando | avanti | (target form) | ||
they | stay:3PL | walk:GER | on | |||
‘They go forward.’ |
(24) | MC4 | Lui | sto | guardare | questa | donna | |
he | stay:1SG | look:INF | this | woman | |||
lui | guarda | questa | donna | (target form) | |||
he | look:3SG | this | woman | ||||
‘He looks at this woman.’ |
(25) | MC4 | Queste | persone […] | sto | guardare | questo | bambino | |
these | persons | stay:1SG | look:INF | this | child | |||
queste | persone | guardano | il | bambino | (target form) | |||
these | persons | look:3PL | the | child | ||||
‘These persons look at this child.’ |
6.4. Session 5
(26) | MJ5 | Io | sono | paura | |
I | be:1SG | fear | |||
io | ho | paura | (target form) | ||
I | have:1SG | fear | |||
‘I’m scared.’ |
7. Discussion and Conclusions
- identify in the input functional elements that convey (or are supposed to convey) grammatical meanings;
- understand which segments of the utterances they produce do need morphosyntactic information, that is, that the verb must be associated with grammatical meaning and that inter-clausal linking must be syntactically marked.
Funding
Conflicts of Interest
References
- Amoruso, Marcello, and Angelo Lo Maglio. 2018. I test e la griglia di valutazione. In La forza della Lingua: Percorsi di Inclusione per Soggetti Fragili. Edited by Mari D’Agostino. Palermo: Scuola di Lingua italiana per Stranieri (Strumenti e ricerche 8), pp. 181–83. [Google Scholar]
- Andorno, Cecilia. 2006. La lingua degli apprendenti dal punto di vista delle varietà di apprendimento. In Saperi per Insegnare. Formare Insegnanti di Italiano a Stranieri. Edited by Franca Bosc, Carla Marello and Silvana Mosca. Torino: Loescher, pp. 86–111. [Google Scholar]
- Andorno, Cecilia. 2010. Lo sviluppo della morfosintassi in studenti cinesi. In Italiano di Cinesi, Italiano per Cinesi. Edited by Stefano Rastelli. Perugia: Guerra, pp. 89–122. [Google Scholar]
- Andorno, Cecilia, Giuliano Bernini, Anna Giacalone Ramat, and Ada Valentini. 2003. Sintassi. In Verso l’italiano. Percorsi e Strategie di Acquisizione. Edited by Anna Giacalone Ramat. Roma: Carocci, pp. 116–78. [Google Scholar]
- Banfi, Emanuele, ed. 2003. Italiano L2 di Cinesi. Percorsi Acquisizionali. Milano: FrancoAngeli. [Google Scholar]
- Banfi, Emanuele, and Giuliano Bernini. 2003. Il verbo. In Verso l’italiano. Percorsi e Strategie di Acquisizione. Edited by Anna Giacalone Ramat. Roma: Carocci, pp. 70–115. [Google Scholar]
- Bernini, Giuliano. 1987. Le preposizioni nell’italiano lingua seconda. Quaderni del Dipartimento di Linguistica e letterature comparate dell’Università di Bergamo 3: 29–152. [Google Scholar]
- Bernini, Giuliano. 1989. Strategie di costruzione dei paradigmi verbali in italiano lingua seconda. Quaderni del Dipartimento di Linguistica e letterature comparate dell’Università di Bergamo 5: 195–207. [Google Scholar]
- Bernini, Giuliano. 1995. Lexical expression of modality in second languages: The case of Italian modal verbs. In From Pragmatics to Syntax. Modality in Second Language Acquisition. Edited by Anna Giacalone Ramat and Grazia Crocco Galèas. Tübingen: Narr, pp. 295–318. [Google Scholar]
- Bernini, Giuliano. 2005. La costruzione del lessico in italiano L2. In Morfologia e Dintorni. Studi di linguistica Tipologica e Acquisizionale. Edited by Nicola Grandi. Milano: FrancoAngeli, pp. 158–78. [Google Scholar]
- Berruto, Gaetano. 2001. L’emergenza della connessione interproposizionale nell’italiano di immigrati. Un’analisi di superficie. Rivista di Linguistica 3: 333–67. [Google Scholar]
- Bigelow, Martha, and Elaine Tarone. 2004. The role of literacy level in second language acquisition: Doesn’t who we study determine what we know? TESOL Quarterly 38: 689–700. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Blommaert, Jan. 2015. Commentary: Super-diversity old and new. Language and Communication 44: 82–89. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Butt, Miriam. 2003. The Light Verb Jungle. In Harvard Working Papers in Linguistics. Papers from the GSAS/Dudley House Workshop on Light Verbs. Edited by Gülşat Aygen, Claire Bowern and Conor Quinn. Harvard: Harvard University, vol. 9, pp. 1–49. [Google Scholar]
- Carroll, Susanne. 2004. Segmentation: Learning how to ‘hear words’ in the L2 speech stream. Transactions of the Philological Society 102: 227–54. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Chafe, Wallace, ed. 1980. The Pear Stories: Cognitive, Cultural, and Linguistic Aspects of Narrative Production. Norwood: Ablex. [Google Scholar]
- Clahsen, Harald, Jürgen M. Meisel, and Manfred Pienemann. 1983. Deutsch als Zweitsprache: der Spracherwerb ausländischer Arbeiter. Tübingen: Narr. [Google Scholar]
- Comrie, Bernard. 1989. Language Universals and Linguistic Typology, 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell. [Google Scholar]
- D’Agostino, Mari. 2017. L’italiano e l’alfabeto per i nuovi arrivati. Testi e Linguaggi 11: 141–56. [Google Scholar]
- D’Agostino, Mari, and Angelo Lo Maglio. 2018. Profili dei migranti: Competenze linguistiche e alfabetizzazione. In La Forza della Lingua: Percorsi di Inclusione per Soggetti Fragili. Edited by Mari D’Agostino. Palermo: Scuola di Lingua italiana per Stranieri (Strumenti e ricerche 8), pp. 23–29. [Google Scholar]
- De Fina, Anna, Giuseppe Paternostro, and Marcello Amoruso. Forthcoming. Odysseus the traveler: Appropriation of a chronotope in a community of practice. Language and Communication. [CrossRef]
- Dittmar, Norbert. 1992. Grammaticalization in second language acquisition: Introduction. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 14: 249–57. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Flege, James Emil, and Serena Liu. 2001. The effect of experience on adults’ acquisition of a second language. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 23: 527–52. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Fleta, M. Teresa. 2003. Is-insertion in L2 grammars of English: A step forward between developmental stages? In Proceedings of the 6th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (GASLA 2002). Edited by Juana M. Liceras, Helmut Zobl and Helen Goodluck. Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project, pp. 85–96. [Google Scholar]
- Giacalone Ramat, Anna. 1992. Grammaticalization processes in the area of temporal and modal relations. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 14: 297–322. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Giacalone Ramat, Anna. 1995. Tense and Aspect in Learner Italian. In Temporal Reference, Aspect and Actionality. Edited by Pier Marco Bertinetto, Valentina Bianchi, Östen Dahl and Mario Squartini. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier, Vol. 2, pp. 289–307. [Google Scholar]
- Giacalone Ramat, Anna. 1997. Progressive periphrasis, Markedness, and Second Language Data. In Language and Its Ecology. Edited by Stig Eliasson and Ernst Hakon Jahr. Berlin and New Yourk: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 261–85. [Google Scholar]
- Giacalone Ramat, Anna. 1999a. Grammaticalization of Modality in Language Acquisition. Studies in Language 23: 377–407. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Giacalone Ramat, Anna. 1999b. Functional typology and strategies of clause connection in second-language acquisition. Linguistics 37: 519–48. [Google Scholar]
- Giacalone Ramat, Anna. 2000. Typological considerations in Second Language Acquisition. Studia Linguistica 54: 123–35. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Giacalone Ramat, Anna, ed. 2003a. Verso l’italiano. Percorsi e Strategie di Acquisizione. Roma: Carocci. [Google Scholar]
- Giacalone Ramat, Anna. 2003b. Gerunds as optional categories in second language acquisition. In Typology and Second Language Acquisition. Edited by Anna Giacalone Ramat. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 181–220. [Google Scholar]
- Giacalone Ramat, Anna. 2008. Typological Universals and Second Language Acquisition. In Universals of Language Today. Edited by Sergio Scalise, Elisabetta Magni and Antonietta Bisetto. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 76. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 253–72. [Google Scholar]
- Giacalone Ramat, Anna. 2013. Typology and second language acquisition. In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. Edited by Carol A. Chapelle. London: Blackwell, pp. 5959–66. [Google Scholar]
- Givón, Talmy. 1990. Syntax. A Functional Typological Introduction. 2 vols. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. [Google Scholar]
- Goldberg, Adele. 1999. The Emergence of the Semantics of Argument Structure Constructions. In The Emergence of Language. Edited by Brian MacWhinney. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 197–212. [Google Scholar]
- Goswami, Usha, and Peter Bryant. 1990. Phonological Skills and Learning to Read. Hillsdale: Erlbaum. [Google Scholar]
- Heine, Bernd, Ulrike Claudi, and Friedericke Hünnemeyer. 1991. Grammaticalization. A Conceptual Framework. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar]
- Henrich, Joseph, Steven J. Heine, and Ara Norenzayan. 2010. The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33: 61–135. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed]
- Hopper, Paul J., and Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 2003. Grammaticalization, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Huebner Thom, Mary Carroll, and Clive Perdue. 1992. The acquisition of English. In Utterance Structure: Developing Grammars Again. Edited by Wolfgang Klein and Clive Perdue. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 1–121. [Google Scholar]
- Janko, Eleni. 2018. The influence of L1 literacy in the acquisition of L2 oral skills. Paper presented at the 14th Annual Symposium LESLLA (Literacy Education and Second Language Learning for Adults), Palermo, Italy, October 4–6. [Google Scholar]
- Jordens, Peter, and Christine Dimroth. 2006. Finiteness in children and adults learning Dutch. In Discovering the World of Verbs. Edited by Natalia Gagarina and Insa Gülzow. Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 167–95. [Google Scholar]
- Julien, Manuela, Roeland van Hout, and Ineke van de Craats. 2016. Meaning and function of dummy auxiliaries in adult acquisition of Dutch as an additional language. Second Language Research 32: 49–73. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Klein, Wolfgang, and Clive Perdue. 1997. The Basic Variety (or: Couldn’t natural languages be much simpler?). Second Language Research 13: 301–47. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Kosmidis, Mary H., Kyrana Tsapkini, and Vasiliki Folia. 2006. Lexical processing in illiteracy: Effect of literacy or education? Cortex 42: 1021–27. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Kurvers, Jeanne, Roeland van Hout, and Ton Vallen. 2007. Literacy and Word Boundaries. In Low-Educated Second Language and Literacy Acquisition. Research, Policy, and Practice. Proceedings of the Second Annual Forum of LESLLA. Edited by Nancy Faux. Richmond: The Literacy Institute at Virginia Commonwealth University, pp. 45–65. [Google Scholar]
- Oldenkamp, Loes. 2013. The Trouble with Inflection of Adult Learners of Dutch. A Study on the L1–L2 Interplay of Morphosyntactic and Phonetic-Phonological Factors. Ph.D. thesis, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. [Google Scholar]
- Onderdelinden, Liesbeth, Ineke van de Craats, and Jeanne Kurvers. 2009. Word concept of illiterates and low-literates: worlds apart? In Low-Educated Second Language and Literacy Acquisition Proceedings of the 4th Symposium, Antwerp 2008. Edited by Ineke van de Craats and Jeanne Kurvers. Utrecht: LOT, pp. 35–48. [Google Scholar]
- Perdue, Clive, ed. 1993. Adult Language Acquisition: Cross-Linguistic Perspectives. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Piske, Thorsten, and Martha Young-Scholten, eds. 2008. Input Matters in SLA. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. [Google Scholar]
- Piske, Thorsten, Ian MacKay, and James Emil Flege. 2001. Factors affecting degree of foreign accent in an L2: A review. Journal of Phonetics 29: 191–215. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Quochi, Valeria. 2007. A Usage-Based Approach to Light Verb Constructions in Italian. Development and Use. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy. [Google Scholar]
- Reis, Alexandra, and Alexandre Castro-Caldas. 1997. Illiteracy: A cause for biased cognitive development. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society 3: 444–50. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Reis, Alexandra, Luís Faísca, Susana Mendonça, Martin Ingvar, and Karl Magnus Petersson. 2007. Semantic interference on a phonological task in illiterate subjects. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 48: 69–74. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed] [Green Version]
- Sanders, Eric, Ineke van de Craats, and Vanja de Lint. 2014. The Dutch LESLLA Corpus. In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-2014). Edited by Nicoletta Calzolari, Khalid Choukri, Thierry Declerck, Hrafn Loftsson, Bente Maegaard, Joseph Mariani, Asuncion Moreno, Jan Odjk and Stelios Piperidis. Reykjavik: European Languages Resources Association (ELRA), pp. 2715–18. [Google Scholar]
- Schimke, Sarah. 2013. Dummy verbs and the acquisition of verb raising in L2 German and French. In Dummy Auxiliaries in First and Second Language Acquisition. Edited by Elma Blom, Ineke van de Craats and Josie Verhagen. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 307–38. [Google Scholar]
- Schmidt, Richard W. 1990. The role of consciousness in second language learning. Applied Linguistics 11: 129–58. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Selinker, Larry. 1972. Interlanguage. International Review of Applied Linguistics 10: 209–31. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- SPRAR. 2017. AA.VV. Atlante SPRAR 2016. In Rapporto Annuale SPRAR (Sistema di Protezione per Richiedenti Asilo e Rifugiati). Roma: Ministero dell’Interno, Available online: https://www.sprar.it/pubblicazioni/atlante-sprar-2016 (accessed on 10 October 2019).
- SPRAR. 2018. AA. VV. Atlante SPRAR 2017. In Rapporto Annuale SPRAR (Sistema di Protezione per Richiedenti Asilo e Rifugiati). Roma: Ministero dell’Interno, Available online: https://www.sprar.it/pubblicazioni/atlante-sprar-2017 (accessed on 10 October 2019).
- Starren, Marianne. 2001. The Second Time: The Acquisition of Temporality in Dutch and French as a Second Language. Utrecht: LOT. [Google Scholar]
- Tammelin-Laine, Taina. 2015. No Verbs, No Syntax: The Development and Use of Verbs in Non-Literate Learners’ Spoken Finnish. In Low Educated Second Language and Literacy Acquisition, Proceedings of the 9th Symposium of LESLLA, San Francisco, CA, USA, August 7–9. Edited by Maricel G. Santos and Anne Whiteside. Morrisville: Lulu Publishing, pp. 249–73. [Google Scholar]
- Tarone, Elaine. 2010. Second language acquisition by low-literate learners: An understudied population. Language Teaching 43: 75–83. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Tarone, Elaine. 2014. Enduring questions from the Interlanguage Hypothesis. In Interlanguage. Forty Years Later. Edited by ZhaoHong Han and Elaine Tarone. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 8–26. [Google Scholar]
- Tarone, Elaine, and Martha Bigelow. 2005. Impact of literacy on oral language processing: Implications on SLA research. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 25: 77–97. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Tarone, Elaine, Martha Bigelow, and Kit Hansen. 2007. The impact of alphabetic print literacy level on oral second language acquisition. In Low-Educated Second Language and Literacy Acquisition. Research, Policy, and Practice. Proceedings of the Second Annual Forum of LESLLA. Edited by Nancy Faux. Richmond: The Literacy Institute at Virginia Commonwealth University, pp. 99–121. [Google Scholar]
- Tarone, Elaine, Martha Bigelow, and Kit Hansen. 2009. Literacy and Second Language Oracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Tintori, Guido, Alfredo Alessandrini, and Fabrizio Natale. 2018. Diversity, Residential Segregation, Concentration of Migrants: A Comparison across EU Cities. Brussels: Publications Office of the European Europe, Available online: http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC115159/d4i_report_final_-_online_1.pdf (accessed on 10 October 2019).
- Tomlin, Russell S. 1990. Functionalism in second language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 12: 155–77. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- UNESCO Institute for Statistics. 2017. More Than One-Half of Children and Adolescents Are Not Learning Worldwide. Fact sheet n. 46, September 2017. Available online: http://uis.unesco.org/sites/default/files/documents/fs46-more-than-half-children-not-learning-en-2017.pdf (accessed on 10 October 2019).
- Vainikka, Anne, and Martha Young-Scholten. 1998. Morphosyntactic triggers in adult SLA. In Morphology and Its Interfaces. Edited by Marie-Louise Beck. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 89–113. [Google Scholar]
- Vainikka, Anne, and Martha Young-Scholten. 2007. The Role of Literacy in the Development of L2 Morpho-Syntax from an Organic Grammar Perspective. In Low-Educated Second Language and Literacy Acquisition. Research, Policy, and Practice. Proceedings of the Second Annual Forum of LESLLA. Edited by Nancy Faux. Richmond: The Literacy Institute at Virginia Commonwealth University, pp. 123–48. [Google Scholar]
- Vainikka, Anne, Martha Young-Scholten, Colleen Ijuin, and Samawal Jarad. 2017. Literacy in the development of L2 English morphosyntax. In Language and Literacy Teaching LESLLA Students. Edited by Marcin Sosinski. Granada: University of Granada, pp. 239–50. [Google Scholar]
- Valentini, Ada. 1992. L’italiano dei Cinesi. Questioni di Sintassi. Milano: Guerini Studio. [Google Scholar]
- Valentini, Ada. 1998. Le frasi causali e l’emergere della subordinazione in italiano L2: Il caso di due apprendenti cinesi. Linguistica e Filologia 8: 113–48. [Google Scholar]
- Valentini, Ada. 2001. La frase finale in italiano L2. Vox Romanica 60: 69–88. [Google Scholar]
- Van de Craats, Ineke. 2009. The role of IS in the acquisition of finiteness by adult Turkish learners of Dutch. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 31: 59–92. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Van de Craats, Ineke. 2011. A LESLLA corpus: L1 obstacles in the learning of L2 morphosyntax. In Low-Educated Second Language and Literacy Acquisition. Proceedings of the 6th Symposium, Cologne 2010. Edited by Christiane Schöneberger, Ineke van de Craats and Jeanne Kurvers. Nijmegen: CLS, pp. 33–48. [Google Scholar]
- Van de Craats, Ineke, and Roeland van Hout. 2010. Dummy auxiliaries in the second language acquisition of Moroccan learners of Dutch: Form and function. Second Language Research 26: 473–500. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Vertovec, Steven. 2007. Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30: 1024–54. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Von Stutterheim, Christiane. 1986. Temporalitat in der Zweitsprache. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. [Google Scholar]
- Young-Scholten, Martha, and Nancy Strom. 2006. First-time L2 readers: Is there a critical period? In Low Educated Adult Second Language and Literacy: Proceedings of the 1st Annual Forum. Edited by Jeanne Kurvers, Ineke van der Craats and Martha Young-Scholten. Utrecht: LOT, pp. 45–68. [Google Scholar]
- Young-Scholten, Martha. Forthcoming. What do we know from 1 ½ decades of LESLLA symposia? In Languages and Literacy in New Migration. Research, Practice, and Policy. Selected Papers from the 14th Annual Symposium of LESLLA (Literacy Education and Second Language Learning for Adults). Edited by Mari D’Agostino and Egle Mocciaro. Palermo: UniPa Press.
1 | There is no national registry of the levels of literacy, education and languages of migrants already living in Italy or who have been arriving in recent years by sea. The data provided by Ministry of the Interior only refer to age, gender, country of birth (D’Agostino 2017). Some data derive from the annual reports of the System of Protection for Asylum Seekers and Refugees (SPRAR 2017, 2018), according to which 23.7% of 19,263 migrants attending Italian language courses in 2016 and 19.5% of 22,452 migrants in 2017 were taking pre-literacy classes. |
2 | Low interaction with speakers in local communities has been widely observed in (sociologically- and sociolinguistically-oriented) migration studies that highlight the segregation experienced by adult migrants who are typically grouped in specific urban areas (cf. inter alia Blommaert 2015; Vertovec 2007; see also the study recently carried out in the context of the European Union reported in Tintori et al. 2018). In Italy, in the case of newcomers, segregation also involves hosting centres, a housing reality certainly multi-faceted—but typically with little connection to the local communities (D’Agostino 2017). Low interaction with native Italian speakers and, hence, low exposure to the target language also emerges from migrants’ own narratives collected for this study (interviews included various questions about linguistic exchanges and languages used in diverse contexts of interaction), as well as previous research conducted at ItaStra (De Fina et al. forthcoming). |
3 | The lack of studies is surprising when one considers the magnitude of the phenomenon in question: while research focuses mainly on literate students, 44% of the 7111 world’s languages (www.ethnologue.com) have no writing systems and, as already mentioned, in large areas of the world primary literacy is not guaranteed even in other L2s (e.g., post-colonial languages). There is thus a problem of representativeness of the learner sample on which second language acquisition theories rely, as the majority of learners investigated belong to a minority of learners that Henrich et al. (2010) called WEIRD (western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic) population. The need to treat literacy as a variable in second language acquisition was recently reiterated by Tarone (2014) as an indispensable update of the very notion of interlanguage, as formulated by Selinker (1972). |
4 | Important exceptions are the research on L2 Finnish (Tammelin-Laine 2015) and on L2 Greek (Janko 2018; Kosmidis et al. 2006). |
5 | As an anonymous reviewer observed, there could be a contradiction between migrants’ low interaction with native Italian speakers and the description of their second language acquisition as “naturalistic”, as this term does imply interaction. It should be noted, however, that exposure to the target language is not a monolithic notion and a wide range of interaction situations make up the migrants’ naturalistic context of acquisition. Among these interaction situations, it is worth mentioning the low quality of the input in the hosting centres or, later, at work, where persons in charge, professionals and volunteers make extensive use of highly simplified and poor versions of the target language (this may reflect an intentional foreigner talk choice, as well as the inherent speakers’ sociolinguistic stratum). In addition, input comes also from other non-native speakers, both in the hosting centres and at work, as in such multilingual microcosms Italian increasingly becomes a lingua franca. The exposure to different varieties of Italian may dramatically affect the morphosyntactic outputs of learners’ interlanguages (cf. Flege and Liu 2001; Piske et al. 2001; Piske and Young-Schoten 2008). |
6 | Other research, however, suggests that segmentation of the speech stream in words first relies on (unconscious) phonological analysis of the signal in prosodic units such as moras, syllables and feet; this is independent of literacy and implies phonological competence and prosodic sensitivity (Carroll 2004). |
7 | The label “basic form” (i.e. form of Basic Variety) refers to verb forms that are used in an unanalysed way, although they may have a morphological facies (in this case, for example, the form resembles a third person singular in -a); cf. Table 1. |
8 | In L2 Italian, forms do not involve morpheme deletion, as in L2 English (*he speak): words are generally morphologically complete, even though the learners may not yet be able to segment them. The formal coincidence of the basic form with forms of the present tense in the target (third person, but also first and second) may depend on the widespread presence of these forms in the input (Banfi and Bernini 2003, p. 100). |
9 | Cf. Implicationality also emerged from other large empirical studies such as the ZISA project (Zweitspracherwerb Italienischer und Spanischer Arbeiter), a cross-sectional exploration of the acquisition of German as a second language by 45 immigrants with Romance linguistic backgrounds (cf. Clahsen et al. 1983). |
10 | Bernini (1989) is based on eight learners with various L1s (three Tigrinya speakers, three English speakers, one German speaker, one Malaysian speaker). Banfi and Bernini (2003) is based on 20 learners of the Pavia project (Giacalone Ramat 2003a) who have the following L1s: Albanian (one), Arabic (Moroccan, one), Chichewa (two), Chinese (five, different dialects), English (three), French (one), German (four), Tigrinya (three). |
11 | This study involved eight learners, namely one German, one Tigrinya and six Arabic speakers. |
12 | All participants gave their informed consent for inclusion before they participated in the study. The study, ethically conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, was approved by the Department of Humanities of the University of Palermo in 2016 (81933, 24/10/2016). |
13 | The presence in Group 2 of MD, who declared 10 years of school experience, is because he attended the Quranic school (Q in Table 2), where education is specifically aimed at memorising the Quran in Arabic (that is, a foreign language) through oral repetition. It is worth noting that MD did not include Arabic among the languages of his repertoire. |
14 | This explains possible inconsistency between data in the categories of “Early literacy” and “Late literacy”, as in the case of BD, MC, MF, MLG, MT and MTR who were non-literate in their L1/early learnt languages, but able to read isolated words in Italian. |
15 | I considered the past participle to have been acquired when it started to alternate with basic forms to convey the perfective vs. non-perfective opposition. I considered the interlanguages as still basic, where the only participle that occurred was finito ‘finished’, which is a lexical means to express the completeness of the action denoted by the uninflected verb it occurs with (e.g., finito dormire ‘literally: finished to sleep’, cf. Banfi and Bernini 2003). |
16 | In Italian, a present form of ‘to be’ and the past participle of a lexical verb form the perfective past tense passato prossimo, such as mi sono lavato ‘I washed myself’ in (8) and ha fatto in MT2’s utterance in (10); cf. Section 2. |
17 | Most likely because of their general semantics, light verbs are also highly frequent, as in the case of verbs meaning ‘give’, ‘go’, ‘make’, ‘put’, along with ‘do’, at the cross-linguistic level (cf. inter al. Goldberg 1999, p. 202; Hopper and Traugott 2003, pp. 112–14). |
18 | On the formal level, this pattern resembles another construction in which fare is involved in the target language, that is, the analytical causative construction (e.g., ti faccio piangere ‘I make you cry’), but in the learners’ IC there is no trace of the causative meaning and fare only “verbalises” the subsequent verb. |
19 | CPIAs are the Territorial Centres for Adult Education that are part of the national educational system. |
Variety | Main lexical Categories | Functional Elements | Inflection (Tense-Aspect-Mood) | Inflection (Person) | Utterance Organisation |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Pre-basic | no distinction first, second, third personal pronouns | some marks of negation (no, non) (some) conjunctions (e ‘and’, anche ‘also’, poi ‘then’) unanalysed existential c’è ‘there is’ | none | none | pragmatic principles (topic/focus) interclausal links (juxtaposition, coordination) |
Basic | N and V are distinct basic form of V (theme, unanalysed form of the present, infinitive)8 | (some) prepositions (new) conjunctions adverbs | none | argument structure ➔ semantic-pragmatic principles (Agent-V-Object) (➔ syntactic principles: SVO) interclausal links (juxtaposition, coordination) | |
Post-basic | copula (some forms) | -to (past participle) | syntactic principles (SVO) prepositions governing Ns | ||
perfective auxiliaries (essere, avere) | differences in the present tense | interclausal links (subordination: adverbial, i.e., causal ➔ temporal ➔ final adverbials) | |||
imperfect (some forms of ‘be’: ero, era) | interclausal links (subordination: completive ➔ relative) | ||||
auxiliary stare ‘stay’ + gerund (progressive) | -v- (imperfect morpheme for thematic verbs) | ||||
gerund | |||||
future | |||||
conditional mood subjunctive mood |
Phase 1 | Ø + N (e.g., andato Napoli ‘gone Napoli > I went to Napoli’) |
Phase 2 | P + N (frequent overgeneralisation, e.g., l’amico per mia sorella ‘the friend for [target: di ‘of’] my sister’) |
V + Ø + V (e.g., io vado lavorare ‘I go work > I go to [target a ‘to’] work’) | |
Phase 3 | V + P + V (frequent overgeneralisation, e.g., questo è pesante per spiegare ‘this is hard for [target: da ‘to’] explain’); only in a very late stage this pattern becomes target-like. |
Learner | Age | Country of Origin | L1 /Other Languages | Schooling | Early Literacy (L1/School Ls) | Residence | Courses in Italy | L2 Italian | Late Literacy in Roman Alphabet |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
AC | 20 | Nigeria | Ika; English, Pidgin Eng. | 12 years | Group 3 English | 18 months | 6 months | pre-basic | - |
AL | 27 | Nigeria | Urhobo; Bini, English, Pidgin | 10 years | Group 3 English | 18 months | 5 months | basic | - |
AO | 24 | Nigeria | Esan; English, Pidgin | 12 years | Group 3 English | 12 months | 2 months | basic | - |
BD | 18 | Guinea | Pulaar; Wolof, French | 2 years (Q) | Group 1 | 11 months | 5 months | basic | Group 2 |
CO | 26 | Nigeria | Ika; Igbo, English, Pidgin | 12 years | Group 3 English | 12 months | 10 months | post-basic | - |
GO | 27 | Nigeria | Esan; Yoruba; English, Pidgin | 15 years | Group 3 English | 16 months | 9 months | post-basic | - |
HL | 25 | Nigeria | Esan; English, Pidgin | - | Group 1 | 11 months | 3 months | none | Group 1 |
ID | 25 | Ivory Coast | French, Kojaka; Bambara Malinki | 12 years | Group 3 French | 11 months | 7-8 months | post-basic | - |
LO | 25 | Nigeria | Igbo; English, Pidgin | - | Group 1 | 11 months | none | pre-basic | Group 1 |
MC | 18 | Gambia | Mandinka; Creole | 3 years | Group 1 | 21 months | 10 months | basic | Group 2 |
MD | 30 | Senegal | Mandinka; French, English | 10 years (Q) | Group 2 Arabic | 11 months | 10 months | post-basic | Group 2 French |
MF | 28 | Mali | Bambara; French | - | Group 1 | 12 months | 7 months | basic | Group 2 |
MJ | 24 | Nigeria | Igbo; English, Pidgin Eng. | 11 years | Group 3 English | 11 months | 11 months | post-basic | - |
MLG | 25 | Burkina Faso | Bissa; Mòoré, French | 5 years (Q) | Group 1 | 11 months | 6 months | post-basic | Group 2 |
MT | 23 | Mali | Bambara; French | - | Group 1 | 11 months | 6 months | post-basic | Group 2 |
MTR | 25 | Ivory Coast | Bambara; Senufo, Wolof, French | 2 years (Q) | Group 1 | 11 months | 9 months | post-basic | Group 2 |
OT | 23 | Gambia | Mandinka; Wolof, English | 12 years | Group 3 | 16 months | 4 months | basic | - |
RC | 18 | Bangladesh | Bengali | 8 years | Group 3 Bengali/Eng. | 13 months | 9 months | basic | - |
SM | 27 | Bangladesh | Bengali; English | 12 years | Group 3 Bengali/Eng. | 12 months | none | basic | - |
YS | 30 | Senegal | Pulaar; Wolof, French | 2 years (Q) | Group 1 | 10 months | 5 months | post-basic | Group 1 |
Group 1 | Group 2 | Group 3 | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
SESSIONS 1–2 | |||||||||
Prebasic | Basic | Postbasic | Prebasic | Basic | Postbasic | Prebasic | Basic | Postbasic | |
Analytical ICs | - | Do-C | Do-C Be-C | - | - | Do-C Be-C | - | - | - |
Subordinating ICs | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
Group 1 | Group 2 | Group 3 | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Prebasic | Basic | Postbasic | Prebasic | Basic | Postbasic | Prebasic | Basic | Postbasic | |
Analytical ICs | - | - | Be-C | - | - | Do-C | - | - | - |
Subordinating ICs | - | - | Per-C Come-C | - | - | Per-C | - | - | Come-C |
Group 1 | Group 2 | Group 3 | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Prebasic | Basic | Postbasic | Prebasic | Basic | Postbasic | Prebasic | Basic | Postbasic | |
Analytical ICs | - | - | Do-C Be-C Stay-C | - | - | Do-C Be-C | - | - | Do-C Go-C |
Subordinating ICs | - | - | Per-C Come-C | - | - | Per-C Come-C | - | - | - |
Group 1 | Group 2 | Group 3 | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Prebasic | Basic | Postbasic | Prebasic | Basic | Postbasic | Prebasic | Basic | Postbasic | |
Analytical ICs | - | Be-C Go-C | Do-C Be-C Stay-C | - | - | Do-C Be-C Stay-C | - | - | Be-C |
Subordinating ICs | - | - | Per-C | - | - | Per-C Come-C | - | - | - |
Group 1 | Group 2 | Group 3 | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
SESSIONS 1–2 | |||||||||
prebasic | basic | postbasic | prebasic | basic | postbasic | prebasic | basic | postbasic | |
Analytical ICs | - | Do-C | Do-C Be-C | - | - | Do-C Be-C | - | - | - |
Subordinating ICs | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
SESSION 3 | |||||||||
prebasic | basic | postbasic | prebasic | basic | postbasic | prebasic | basic | postbasic | |
Analytical ICs | - | - | Be-C | - | - | Do-C | - | - | - |
Subordinating ICs | - | - | Per-C Come-C | - | - | Per-C | - | - | Come-C |
SESSION 4 | |||||||||
prebasic | basic | postbasic | prebasic | basic | postbasic | prebasic | basic | postbasic | |
Analytical ICs | - | - | Do-C Be-C Stay-C | - | - | Do-C Be-C | - | - | Do-C Go-C |
Subordinating ICs | - | - | Per-C Come-C | - | - | Per-C Come-C | - | - | - |
SESSION 5 | |||||||||
prebasic | basic | postbasic | prebasic | basic | postbasic | prebasic | basic | postbasic | |
Analytical ICs | - | Be-C Go-C | Do-C Be-C Stay-C | - | - | Do-C Be-C Stay-C | - | - | Be-C |
Subordinating ICs | - | - | Per-C | - | - | Per-C Come-C | - | - | - |
© 2019 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Share and Cite
Mocciaro, E. Emerging Constructions in the L2 Italian Spoken by Low Literate Migrants. Languages 2019, 4, 86. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages4040086
Mocciaro E. Emerging Constructions in the L2 Italian Spoken by Low Literate Migrants. Languages. 2019; 4(4):86. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages4040086
Chicago/Turabian StyleMocciaro, Egle. 2019. "Emerging Constructions in the L2 Italian Spoken by Low Literate Migrants" Languages 4, no. 4: 86. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages4040086