The uses of clitic si in Child Italian
Dal Farra, Chiara (University of Milano-Bicocca)
Silleresi, Silvia (University of Milano-Bicocca)
Alexiadou, Artemis (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Sauerland, Uli (Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics)
Guasti, Maria Teresa (University of Milano-Bicocca)

Date:	2025
Abstract:	This paper investigates the different uses of the clitic si in Child Italian. Through a corpus study on spontaneous productions of children aged 1;4-3;4, we check whether all functions of si are realized by children and we give a new perspective from language acquisition to a long-standing debate, namely whether there exists only one type of si or whether there are many different ones. Our results show that Italian children use si productively and adult-like early on, and they produce all its different functions: impersonal, anticausative, true reflexive, and inherent reflexive - although at different rates. We claim that our results support the one si approaches, and the difference in the frequencies of si functions reflects the structural complexity of some structures.
Note:	This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (LeibnizDream, Grant Agreement No. 856421).
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Clitic si ; Italian ; First language acquisition ; Impersonal ; Syntax
Published in:	Isogloss, Vol. 11, Num. 1 (2025) , p. 1-28 (Articles) , ISSN 2385-4138

Adreça original: https://revistes.uab.cat/isogloss/article/view/v11-n1-dalfarra-et-al
DOI: 10.5565/pub/isogloss.597
DOI: 10.5565/rev/isogloss.597

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