University of Wisconsin Milwaukee UWM Digital Commons Theses and Dissertations August 2018 Italian as a Heritage Language Spoken in the US Maria Teresa Bonfatti Sabbioni University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.uwm.edu/etd Part of the Linguistics Commons Recommended Citation Bonfatti Sabbioni, Maria Teresa, "Italian as a Heritage Language Spoken in the US" (2018). Theses and Dissertations. 1757. https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/1757 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by UWM Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UWM Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ITALIAN AS HERITAGE LANGUAGE SPOKEN IN THE US by Maria Teresa Bonfatti Sabbioni A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics at The University of Milwaukee-Wisconsin August 2018 ABSTRACT ITALIAN AS HERITAGE LANGUAGE SPOKEN IN THE US by Maria Teresa Bonfatti Sabbioni The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2018 Under the Supervision of Professor Sandra Pucci “L'italiano è di nuovo una lingua scritta e non parlata, dei dotti e non della nazione” - A.Gramsci (1891 – 1937) The present study focuses on Italian as a heritage language spoken in the US by individuals bilingual in Italian and English, exposed to both language since birth. The subjects of the study are the members of six family nuclei, for a total of seven children as heritage speakers of Italian and as input receivers, and 6 parents as native speakers of Standard Italian and as input providers, living in different cities in Wisconsin and Illinois. The study specifically investigates the following structures: a) Gender assignment and gender agreement between determiner, noun and adjective; b) Auxiliary selection in the Italian compound past tense passato prossimo; c) Presence of the contrast between passato prossimo and imperfetto in the same narrative; d) Preferred past tense forms; e) Production of direct objects in the form of clitic or as a full lexical noun; f) Clitic placement in the contexts of use with negative imperative and with modal verbs; and g) Different uses of piacere verb. Eight tasks were administered, divided between oral and written modalities, of which oral tasks are in the form of elicitation, of picture description, of sentence building based on pictures, and of semi-free speech. Written ii tasks are in the form of forced-choice acceptability, binary acceptability, Yes/No acceptability judgment, and multiple-choice selection task. The study aims to investigate possible differences and similarities between the heritage language and the language of origin, under the assumption of the heritage grammar as an independent linguistic system with its own set of rules. The findings suggest that the nature of the differences between the two systems doesn't reside only in language performance, but also in language structure. Specifically, systematic differences between the two systems take place in grammatical adomains in which the source language displays degrees of variability and language specific properties. Therefore, these differences represent the heritage speakers’ attempt at regularizing language specific rules. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables I. CHAPTER: Introduction 1 Theoretical assumption 1 Language acquisition 2 Language acquisition in heritage language scenario 3 The notion of linguistic competence 7 The role of the input 8 The notion of vulnerable domains 10 The comparative fallacy 12 The current study and research questions 13 II. CHAPTER: Literature review Definition of heritage language 16 Definition of heritage speakers 17 The Italian under investigation 17 Previous studies on heritage grammar 18 III. CHAPTER: The methodology Motivation behind the methodology 26 Link between the aural acquisition modality and task modality 28 The environment of use of the heritage language 29 The bilingual nature of the heritage system 30 The experimental design 31 The experimental group 31 The subjects’ linguistic and cultural features 32 The absence of a native monolingual control group 33 Two kinds of analysis: Error analysis and Interlanguage analysis 35 The scoring procedure employed in the study 36 The Grammatical selections of the study 38 Reasons for the study’s grammatical selection 39 Background Information on the Structures under Investigation 40 Structure 1: The morphology of Standard Italian nouns 40 Structure 2: The clitic pronouns in Standard Italian 43 Structure 3: The temporal system of Standard Italian 47 The contrast between Passato Prossimo and Imperfetto 48 The auxiliary selection in Standard Italian 51 The auxiliary Selection Hierarchy (ASH) 52 Structure 4: The construction of the verb piacere (to like) 54 Description of the task 55 Modality and type of task 56 iv TASK 1 Oral Picture Description – gender assignment 58 TASK 2 Written Forced-Choice (FC) Judgment - auxiliary selection 63 TASK 3 Oral Elicitation-clitic object pronouns 67 TASK 4 Written Yes/No Acceptability Judgment –clitic object pronoun 71 placement TASK 5 Oral Sentence Building Picture - past tense production 76 TASK 6 Binary Written Acceptability Judgment – contrast between passato 78 prossimo and imperfetto TASK 7 Written Yes/No Acceptability Judgment - different uses of the 81 verb piacere TASK 8 Semi-Free Speech - re-telling story 85 IV. CHAPTER: Results from error analysis 87 Why error analysis? 87 Results from error analysis 88 TASK 1 Oral Picture Description Task – gender assignment 89 TASK 2 Written Forced-Choice (FC) Judgment-auxiliary selection 94 TASK 3 Oral Elicitation-clitic object pronouns 98 TASK 4 Written Yes/No Acceptability Judgment –clitic object pronoun placement 100 TASK 5 Oral Sentence Building Picture Task- past tense production 103 TASK 6 Binary Written Acceptability Judgment – contrast between passato 105 prossimo and imperfetto TASK 7 Written Yes/No Acceptability Judgment Task- different uses of the 107 verb piacere TASK 8 Semi-Free Speech Task - re-telling story 109 Synoptic view of the children’s behavior 111 The limitation of error analysis 113 V. CHAPTER: Results from interlanguage analysis 115 Why interlanguage analysis 115 Results 116 TASK 1 Oral Picture Description Task – gender assignment 117 TASK 2 Written Forced-Choice (FC) Judgment-auxiliary selection 129 TASK 3 Oral Elicitation-clitic object pronouns 132 TASK 4 Written Yes/No Acceptability Judgment –clitic object pronoun 139 placement TASK 5 Oral Sentence Building Picture Task- past tense production 144 TASK 6 Binary Written Acceptability Judgment – contrast between passato 149 prossimo and imperfetto TASK 7 Written Yes/No Acceptability Judgment Task- different uses of the 153 verb piacere TASK 8 Semi-Free Speech Task - re-telling story 162 v VI. CHAPTER: Discussion 171 Answer to the initial research questions and hypothesis 171 Discussion on gender assignment and gender agreement 123 Discussion on form and placement of object clitic pronouns 177 Discussion on tense and aspect 179 Discussion on auxiliary Selection 182 The subjects’ behavior in auxiliary selection 184 Continuum of acceptability of different contexts of use of piacere verb 187 Difference between HL (heritage language) and SL (source language) 193 Implications of the study 200 Extra linguistic factors at play 203 Methodological challenges 204 Further studies 205 Conclusion 207 VIII. References 210 IX. Appendices 222 Appendix A 222 Appendix B 235 X. Curriculum Vitae 246 vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Declension classes in Standard Italian 41 Table 2. Strong and clitic pronouns in Standard Italian 44 Table 3. Forms of Italian past tense 47 Table 4. The Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy (ASH) 53 Table 5. Percentage of parents and children’s behavior in gender assignment and gender 90 agreement in all masculine and feminine target nouns Table 6. Parents and children’s behavior in gender assignment and gender agreement in all 90 masculine and feminine target nouns, in line with Standard Italian Table 7. Percentages of the subjects’ behavior in gender agreement between determiner 91 and noun and noun and adjective with feminine and with masculine nouns Table 8. Presence/absence of acquisition in the children’ behavior and presence/absence of 92 deviations in the parents’ behavior in gender assignment and agreement Table 9. Percentages of the subjects’ auxiliary selection as well presence/absence of 95 acquisition in the children and deviations from the native language in the parents Table 10. Percentage of the subjects’ auxiliary selection in line with Standard Italian, in 96 three semantic verb groups Table 11. Presence/absence of acquisition in children and presence/absence of deviations 96 in parents Table 12. Percentages of the subjects’ productions in line with Standard Italian for clitic 99 object pronoun and for object noun Table 13. Percentage of the subjects’ judgments of the object clitic pronouns’ placement 101 in both contexts of use Table 14. Percentages of the subjects’ judgments of clitic placement in line with Standard 101 Italian, in each context of use Table 15. Percentage of the subjects’ past tense productions in line with Standard Italian 104 Table 16. Percentages of the parents and children’ judgment for the use of passato 105 prossimo and imperfetto vii Table 17. Percentages of the subjects’ acceptance of piacere verb in all target sentences 107 Table 18. Children’s behavior in line with Standard Italian in