Topics and passives in Italian-speaking children and adults

ABSTRACTThrough two elicited production experiments we investigated how preschool Italian-speaking children access the left periphery of the clause with respect to topics in Clitic Left Dislocation (ClLD) structures. Since the discourse conditions of the experiments are felicitous for the production of passives as well, we also investigated children’s production of different types of passives, and how it compares to adults’. A rich and variegated array of results indicate young children’s early access to the left peripheral topic positions—also in a nonadult manner through use of a-marked topics—and preference for ClLD over passive in contrast to adults; children’s early access to passive in the causative voice also emerged as well as use of ClLD with null generic subject as an alternative to the (copular/venire) passive. Intervention locality/relativized minimality plays a crucial role in interpreting the articulated results within the system developed in Friedmann, Belletti & Rizzi (2009) and much subse...