The Production of Clitic Pronouns: A Study on Bilingual and Monolingual Dyslexic Children

Clitic production is reported to be challenging for impaired children, suffering from dyslexia or SLI, and for early second language learners too. On the contrary, research has not directly investigated the relation between dyslexia, bilingualism and clitic production. The aim of our study is that of addressing this topic, by analyzing the performance of 4 groups of children in a clitic elicitation task: 25 Italian monolingual dyslexic children (mean age 10;08 years old), 33 Italian monolingual typically developing children (9;99 years old), 25 bilingual dyslexic children with Italian as L2 (10;31 years old) and 31 bilingual typically developing children with Italian as L2 (10;30 years old). As inclusion criteria, bilingual children had at least 5 years of exposure to Italian, including 3 years of consecutive school attendance in Italy. Clitic production was assessed bymeans of an elicitation task in which the pronoun had to be produced either in the simple present or in the present perfect; higher difficulties were expected in this last condition, in which the clitic has to agree in gender and number with the past participle. Results revealed that dyslexic children, both monolingual and bilingual, performed worse than controls both in the simple present and in the present perfect, indicating that clitic production is challenging in dyslexia. As for the bilingual children, instead, differences were found between the two tasks. In the simple present, bilingual children performed very accurately and similarly to their monolingual peers, indicating that a target performance with clitics is accomplished by typically developing children with a longer exposure to Italian and suggesting that previously reported difficulties were related to linguistic immaturity and are likely to disappear as their L2 exposure and competence grow. In the present perfect, instead, both groups of bilinguals performed worse than their monolingual peers, suggesting that bilingualism could exacerbate the difficulties in the most challenging condition. Importantly, however, no negative effect of bilingualism in clitic production was found once controlling for the subjects\u2019 vocabulary, evidencing the importance of lexical competence in the target language for a native-like performance in clitic production

On the production of functional categories in children with dyslexia. A study on pronouns, articles and prepositions

La Dislessia Evolutiva (DE) \ue8 tradizionalmente definita come un disturbo neurobiologico che concerne l\u2019incapacit\ue0 di imparare a leggere correttamente da parte di individui con quoziente intellettivo nella norma. \uc8 stato ampiamente dimostrato che alla base della DE ci siano persistenti deficit fonologici (Catts, 1989; Ramus et al., 2003; Snowling, 2000). In realt\ue0, la dislessia \ue8 spesso caratterizzata da difficolt\ue0 che vanno al di l\ue0 dei problemi fonologici, in quanto i soggetti dislessici diagnosticati, rispetto ai normodotati, hanno performance peggiori in compiti che riguardano anche altre componenti linguistiche. I ricercatori, infatti, hanno riscontrato nei soggetti con dislessia specifici deficit grammaticali che si correlano a difficolt\ue0 di produzione e comprensione di costruzioni sintattiche complesse, come le frasi relative (Bar-Shalom et al., 1993; Robertson and Joanisse, 2010; Wiseheart et al., 2009; a.o) e le frasi passive (Leikin and Assayag-Bouskila, 2004; Stein et al., 1984; Reggiani, 2009; a.o). Specifiche difficolt\ue0 dei dislessici sono state trovate anche nell\u2019ambito della morfologia verbale (Rispens et al., 2004), con i pronomi (Waltzman and Cairns, 2000) e con la negazione (Vender and Delfitto, 2010; Scappini et al., 2015). Questa tesi fornisce un contributo ad una nuova linea di ricerca, ora in corso di sviluppo in Italia, che affronta il tema dei deficit di produzione linguistica nei bambini con DE (Arosio et al., in press; Guasti, 2013; Guasti et al., 2015). Tramite tecniche di produzione elicitata, abbiamo analizzato le abilit\ue0 dei bambini dislessici (tra 8 e 10 anni) nell\u2019uso di tre tipi di parole funzionali quali articoli definiti, preposizioni articolate e pronomi clitici oggetto diretto, in quanto la produzione di espressioni contenenti ognuno di essi implica livelli diversi di complessit\ue0 morfosintattica. Abbiamo creato un protocollo serimentale che consiste di 3 test indipendenti attraverso cui abbiamo elicitato rispettivamente: 1) pronomi proclitici, 2) pronomi proclitici ed enclitici, 3) articoli definiti e preposizioni articolate. Il nostro obiettivo era duplice. Inanzitutto, abbiamo verificato se e in che misura la dislessia avesse un ruolo nella produzione orale di differenti strutture linguistiche che contengono categorie funzionali. Poi, abbiamo cercato di capire se i problemi dei dislessici potessero essere attribuiti a ragioni morfosintattiche. I risultati mostrano che, rispetto ai controlli di pari et\ue0, i bambini dislessici presentano difficolt\ue0 significative nella produzione di determinati elementi funzionali. Inoltre, le loro difficolt\ue0 aumentano quando la complessit\ue0 morfosintattica \ue8 maggiore dato che, in questo caso, \ue8 richiesto loro un maggiore impiego di risorse di memoria di lavoro. In generale, la nostra analisi dimostra che a) i bambini con dislessia non hanno problemi nella produzione di articoli definiti, dato che essa non richiede nessuna operazione di movimento sintattico; b) essi mostrano di avere qualche difficolt\ue0 con le preposizioni, in quanto la produzione di tali elementi implica un processo di incorporazione di due teste funzionali, la preposizione e il determinante (P+D); c) i dislessici hanno evidenti problemi con i pronomi clitici e, in particolare, con i proclitici. Infatti, a differenza di quanto accade con gli altri due elementi considerati, la produzione dei proclitici coinvolge un particolare processo sintattico di movimento, che d\ue0 luogo ad un ordine non canonico dei costituenti in Italiano. Sulla base dei risultati ottenuti, riteniamo che le difficolt\ue0 fonologiche riscontrate nei bambini dislessici possano essere estese al dominio morfosintattico e che le loro limitate capacit\ue0 di memoria di lavoro si riflettono anche nella produzione orale di determinate strutture linguistiche (morfosintatticamente complesse).Developmental Dyslexia (DD) is traditionally defined as a neurobiological disorder concerning the failure in learning to read properly in individuals who have normal intelligence. It is widely accepted that at the base of DD there are persistent phonological impairments (Catts, 1989; Ramus et al., 2003; Snowling, 2000). Actually, dyslexia is often characterized by difficulties that go far beyond the phonological problems, as other language components are also affected in diagnosed dyslexic subjects. In fact, researchers found that people with dyslexia also exhibit specific grammatical deficits related to difficulties in production and comprehension of complex syntactic constructions, such as relative clauses (Bar-Shalom et al., 1993; Robertson and Joanisse, 2010; Wiseheart et al., 2009; a.o) and passive sentences (Leikin and Assayag-Bouskila, 2004; Stein et al., 1984; Reggiani, 2009; a.o). In addition, dyslexics have difficulties with verbal morphology (Rispens et al., 2004), pronouns (Waltzman and Cairns, 2000) and negation (Vender and Delfitto, 2010; Scappini et al., 2015). This thesis provides a contribution to a new research line, now under development in Italy, dealing with the issue of oral language deficits in children with DD (Arosio et al., in press; Guasti, 2013; Guasti et al., 2015). Through elicited production techniques, we investigated the abilities of dyslexic children (aged 8-10 years) in using three types of functional words, namely definite articles, articulated prepositions and object clitic pronouns, as the production of expressions containing each of them involves different degrees of morphosyntactic complexity. We designed an experimental protocol consisting of three independent tasks through which we elicited respectively: 1) proclitic pronouns, 2) proclitic and enclitic pronouns, 3) definite articles and articulated prepositions. Our goal was twofold. First, we verified whether and to what extent dyslexia affects the oral production of different linguistic structures containing functional categories. Then, we aimed at understanding whether dyslexics\u2019 problems can be due to morphosyntactic reasons. The results show that, with respect to age-matched controls, dyslexic children have significant difficulties in the production of certain functional elements. Interestingly, their difficulties increase when the degree of morphosyntactic complexity is greater, as a higher load of Working Memory resources is required. Overall, our analysis demonstrates that a) children with dyslexia have no problem in the production of definite articles, since it does not require any syntactic movement opertation; b) they encounter some difficulties with prepositions, as these elements are obtained through a process of incorporation (P+D); c) they display significant problems with clitic pronouns, in particular with proclitics. In comparison to the other two elements, in fact, the production of proclitics involves a particular syntactic movement that results in a non-canonical word order in Italian. Therefore, we believe that the phonological difficulties found in dyslexic children may be extended to the morphosyntactic domain and that their limited working memory capacity is also reflected in the oral production of particular linguistic structures

Inflectional morphology and dyslexia: Italian children's performance in a nonword pluralization task

In this study, we present the results of an original experimental protocol designed to assess the performance in a pluralization task of 52 Italian children divided into two groups: 24 children with developmental dyslexia (mean age 10.0 years old) and 28 typically developing children (mean age 9.11 years old). Our task, inspired by Berko's Wug Test, had the aim of testing the subjects' ability to apply pluralization rules to nonwords in the morphologically complex context of Italian nominal inflection. Results demonstrate that dyslexics display poorer morphological skills in comparison to controls, showing lower accuracy in the task. Furthermore, the dissimilar performances reported by the subjects in the different conditions indicate that the ability to inflect nonwords depends on factors such as the rule's productivity, frequency, and opacity with respect to gender. Finally, the children's performance in this task was significantly related to their reading proficiency, and it could predict accuracy in word reading independently of phonological awareness and working memory

Inflectional Morphology: Evidence for an Advantage of Bilingualism in Dyslexia

It has been shown that morphological skills are particularly enhanced in bilingual children, whereas they are compromised in dyslexics. The aim of this work is that of investigating how bilingualism interacts with dyslexia in a task measuring the subject\u2019s morphological abilities, to verify if the advantage typically found in bilingualism arises also in presence of a linguistic pathology such as dyslexia. We administered a task assessing the subject\u2019s ability to generate plural noun inflections of nonwords to 106 children: 24 Italian monolingual dyslexics (mean age 10;0 y.o.), 30 Italian monolingual typically developing children (10;1), 22 bilingual dyslexic children with Italian as L2 (10;4) and 30 bilingual typically developing children with Italian as L2 (10;2). Results point to a positive effect of bilingualism, which also extends to dyslexia, with bilingual dyslexics performing consistently better than monolingual dyslexics, approaching and even surpassing, as in the most difficult conditions, the performance of monolingual unimpaired children