<i>I pronomi clitici nell'apprendimento dell'italiano come L2: il clitico "si" nelle varietà di apprendimento</i>

Abstract

This study provides further evidence of UG access in Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Data focusing on the so-called third person “dative” pronouns were collected in both monolingual classes of English speaking learners (The College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts, among others) and plurilingual classes (Centro Internazionale Studenti Giorgio La Pira, Firenze) through “triangulation” (cf. Chaudron [2003]), since we claim that no single-test approach can adequately be used in SLA studies. Then our data were compared to existing grammatical structures in the dialects of Italy. What was found was that interlanguage grammars are “possible languages”, that is, errors in SLA are to be considered as parametric choices available to the learners and which we expect to be realized in languages. As a matter of fact, the clitic si is used both in adult varieties (cf. Manzini – Savoia [2005; 2007]) and in interlanguage grammars as a “dative”, as is shown in the following examples:

Following Manzini – Savoia (2005; 2007), we claim that there is no “dative” category. What may be considered a lexicalization of a dative in standard Italian is only a morphologically third person distributor. Another language such as S. Agata del Bianco may lexicalize a si-type distributor; other languages either a ne-type clitic (Nocara) or a locative clitic (Modena). Our results contrast with functional approaches to SLA: we claim that the Italian clitic si as a third person dative pronoun is acquirable through learners’ implicit universal knowledge rather than through the five strategies proposed by Selinker (1972) and Chini (2000; 2005). Our conclusion is that Universal Grammar is thus to be considered more relevant in SLA than it has been considered so far.