Gli effetti del contatto croato-italiano nelle produzioni di un bambino bilingue

In questo contributo viene considerato il mescolamento di codice e il transfer nelle produzioni di un bambino bilingue nel periodo tra 3 e 5 anni. Analizzeremo i dati del diario tenuto in questo periodo dai genitori. Uno degli effetti della presenza e quindi del contatto di due lingue nella mente di un bambino bilingue è il mescolamento di codice. Nel presente studio vengono esaminati esempi del mescolamento di croato e italiano all’interno delle frasi nonché all’interno delle parole osservato nelle produzioni del bambino. I dati smentiscono alcuni dei vincoli del mescolamento proposti da alcuni linguisti (es. Poplack 1980; Sankoff/Poplack 1981; Belazi et al. 1994). Un altro importante effetto sotto esame è il trasferimento delle regole di una lingua nelle produzioni nell’altra lingua

Corpora e varietà minoritarie: le isole walser in Italia

In the paper, the problems of building a corpus of a low-density variety are considered in the light of two projects - DiWaC and ArchiWals - built to preserve the linguistic and cultural heritage of the Walser German communities of Piedmont and Aosta Valley. In the paper it is argued that similar problems affect the task of working on spoken and written data of low-density varieties. On the one hand low-density varieties are defined by the absence or scarcity of ready-to-use language resources for automatic processing. On the other hand, written and spoken data of low-density varieties are both characterised by a high degree of granularity at different levels. The solutions proposed for DiWaC and ArchiWals are an attempt to conjugate computability and granularity by stratifying the information retrieved in the original texts constituting the corpora

“Going standard” on a blank page. A corpus-based approach to the written varieties of the Italian Western Alps minorities (Occitan, Francoprovençal and Walser)

This chapter investigates non-standard languages, i.e., those which are dialectal, non-standardised – or standardised to a very limited extent, repre- sented by the local linguistic varieties that populate the Italian Western Alps. Despite the fact that these have almost exclusively existed as spoken lan- guages throughout their history, our particular aim is to discuss methods and problems raised by the investigation of written corpora of these vari- eties from a corpus linguistics perspective. This is especially challenging because corpus linguistics usually employs methods and standards elabo- rated for standard(ised) written varieties. Focusing the Occitan and Franco- provençal varieties, it is shown that the different historical backgrounds of the two languages also have an impact on their speakers’ attitude towards standardisation and on how texts are produced and accordingly made accessible for corpus linguistics methods

Ideal cardiovascular health and inflammation in European adolescents: The HELENA study

Background and aims Inflammation plays a key role in atherosclerosis and this process seems to appear in childhood. The ideal cardiovascular health index (ICHI) has been inversely related to atherosclerotic plaque in adults. However, evidence regarding inflammation and ICHI in adolescents is scarce. The aim is to assess the association between ICHI and inflammation in European adolescents. Methods and results As many as 543 adolescents (251 boys and 292 girls) from the Healthy Lifestyle in Europe by Nutrition in Adolescence (HELENA) study, a cross-sectional multi-center study including 9 European countries, were measured. C-reactive protein (CRP), complement factors C3 and C4, leptin and white blood cell counts were used to compute an inflammatory score. Multilevel linear models and multilevel logistic regression were used to assess the association between ICHI and inflammation controlling by covariates. Higher ICHI was associated with a lower inflammatory score, as well as with several individual components, both in boys and girls (p < 0.01). In addition, adolescents with at least 4 ideal components of the ICHI had significantly lower inflammatory score and lower levels of the study biomarkers, except CRP. Finally, the multilevel logistic regression showed that for every unit increase in the ICHI, the probability of having an inflammatory profile decreased by 28.1% in girls. Conclusion Results from this study suggest that a better ICHI is associated with a lower inflammatory profile already in adolescence. Improving these health behaviors, and health factors included in the ICHI, could play an important role in CVD prevention