ERIC Number: EJ1249741
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2020-Apr
Pages: 9
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0162-3257
EISSN: N/A
The Production of Pronouns and Verb Inflections by Italian Children with ASD: A New Dataset in a Null Subject Language
Mazzaggio, Greta; Shield, Aaron
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, v50 n4 p1425-1433 Apr 2020
The language of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is often characterized by difficulties with pronouns. The underlying reasons for such difficulties are still unclear. This study is the first to test the abilities of children with ASD who speak Italian, a language in which overt subject pronouns are optional but verbs obligatorily feature person-referencing morphology. We found that Italian children with ASD were less accurate than typically-developing (TD) Italian children in the production of first-, second-, and third-person singular pronouns, avoiding pronouns in favor of nouns or names more often than controls. Moreover, children with ASD produced more overt pronouns than null pronouns in marked contexts, compared to TD children. These phenomena can be accounted for by difficulties with pragmatics.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Form Classes (Languages), Verbs, Italian, Children, Autism, Pervasive Developmental Disorders
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Italy
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A