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Real-time comprehension of gender and number in four- to seven-year-old children: a study of the relationship between Italian clitic pronouns and visual picture referents*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2014

MARCO DISPALDRO ,
ANNA RUGGIERO  and
FRANCESCA SCALI
MARCO DISPALDRO*
Affiliation:
Università degli Studi di Padova, Padova, Italy
ANNA RUGGIERO
Affiliation:
Università degli Studi di Padova, Padova, Italy
FRANCESCA SCALI
Affiliation:
Università degli Studi di Padova, Padova, Italy
*
Address for correspondence: Marco Dispaldro, Department of Development Psychology and Socialization, Università degli Studi di Padova, Via Venezia, 8, Padua 35131, Italy. e-mail: marco.dispaldro@unipd.it
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Abstract

The gender and number of a direct object clitic pronoun are based on the gender and number of the noun to which it refers. Grammatical gender is an intrinsic property of the lexical item that is independent from the natural sex of referents, whereas number is a non-intrinsic feature of nouns based on the conceptual level of quantity. The aim of this paper is to investigate children's ability in matching Italian direct object clitic pronouns to an inanimate visual referent on the basis of number or gender information. The dependent variables are accuracy and response time. A total of sixty-nine children aged from 4;6 to 7;5 participated. The results show that children are more accurate and faster in selecting the referent when they use number information compared to the condition in which this matching operation is led by gender.

Type
Brief Research Reports
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , July 2015 , pp. 917 - 931
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

[*]

This work was supported by a grant from the University of Padova (Assegno di Ricerca Senior 2011). We are grateful to the children who participated in the study and their parents who gave their consent. We thank the schools for their cooperation. We are indebted to Beatrice Benelli for her helpful comments.

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