THE PRODUCTION AND THE ACQUISITION OF SUBJECTAND OBJECT RELATIVE CLAUSES IN ITALIAN:
A COMPARATIVE EXPERIMENTAL STUDY*
Irene Utzeri
University of Siena

1. Introduction
The present study investigates the production and the acquisition of subject and object
restrictive relative clauses (SRCs and ORCs) in Italian. The elicited production of a group of
school-age Italian speaking children is compared to the elicited production of a group of
Italian speaking adults. The comparison between child production and adult production gives
the chance to throw light on the peculiar properties of the acquisition of RCs and to define thevariation area between the two systems: what in the child production is consistent with thetarget language and what is not.
The theoretical background is the well-known Principles & Parameter model elaborated
by Chomsky (1981). According to this approach, the child acquires the particular grammar of
the language he/she is exposed to through the experience and the innate linguistic principles(UG) which drive him/her in the L1 acquisition.
The idea I defend in this paper and the data seem to confirm, is that early grammar is a
UG-constrained system: at every stage in the acquisition it is consistent with UG principles.
With this idea in mind, the proposal to be developed in the present work assumes thatearly relative clauses are derived exactly as in the adult grammar, that is by the movement of
the DP relative head (see section 11).
As I mentioned before, this paper focuses on the production and the acquisition of Italian
subject and object restrictive RCs introduced by the complementizer che, an element that isequivalent to English that and that can be used to introduce both relative and subordinate
clauses.

*

The facts discussed in this paper constitute the core of my MA thesis (Utzeri 2007, submitted) andwere presented at the “Connecticut-Nanzan-Siena Joint Workshop on Linguistic Theory and Language
Acquisition,” held at the University of Nanzan in February 2007. I would like to thank Prof. Adriana
Belletti and Prof. Luigi Rizzi for giving me the chance to participate to that workshop. In addition, I
would like to express my gratitude to everyone who made this fruitful event possible.
Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 3, Vol. 1, 283-313©2007 Irene Utzeri

Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 3, Vol. 1

The standard strategy to form RCs in Italian consists in the extraction of the constituent
we want to relativize and in its movement from the embedded position to the highest node of
the syntactic tree, the CP node.
Intuitively, SRCs and ORCs differ from one another in the position from which theconstituent has moved. Actually, SRCs are derived by movement from the embedded subject
position, as in (1), while ORCs are the result of a movement from the embedded object
position, as in (2):(1)

Il ragazzoi [ che ti ha invitato Maria]
The guyi [ that ti has invited Mary](2)

Il ragazzoi [ che Maria ha invitato ti]
The guyi [ that Mary has invited ti]

Note that in both cases the moved element leaves behind in its original position a trace. The
question which arises is: Which is exactly the element that moves? Of course, there is morethan one plausible answer to this question.
I will consider here the main theories that animate the discussion on the syntax ofrelatives, which is an issue that continues to be at the centre of the debate among researchers.
What the analysis of relatives containing a gap have in common is the presence of an elementthat raises.1 There are different hypotheses on the nature of this element.
A proposal which has found large support is the idea that takes the movement in RCs to
be a movement of a relative operator2 (Cinque 1978, 1981-1982; Chomsky 1986, 1995). In
particular, it moves from its original embedded position to the Spec/CP position, where it iscoindexed with the relative head.
The SRC in (3) and the ORC in (4) are derived according to this theory:1

For this reason this kind of analysis is called “a raising.”

2

In the case of that-relatives the operator is assumed to be empty. On the contrary, it is visible inrelatives introduced by a relative pronoun, as in (i):(i)[ DP Il [NP ragazzoi [CP al quale i C [IP Maria ha dato un libro t i ].
[ DP The [NP guyi
[CP to whom i C [IP Mary has given a book t i ].

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The Production and the Acquisition of Subject and Object Relative Clauses in Italian (I. Utzeri)(3)[DP Il[NP ragazzoi [CP OPi che[DP The [NP guyi
[CP OPi that

[IP ti ha invitato[IP ti has invited

Maria]
Mary]

DP
NP

D°
Il
The

NP

CP

ragazzoi Opi
guyi

C’
IP

C
che
that

I’

Opi
I

VP

ha
has

(4)

V

DP

invitato
invited

Maria
Mary

[DP Il [NP ragazzoi [CP OPi che [IP Maria ha invitato t i ][DP The [NP guyi
[CP OPi that [IP Mary has invited t i ]
DP
D°
Il
The

NP
NP
ragazzoi Opi
guyi

CP
C’
IP

C
che
that

DP
Maria
Mary

I’
VP

I
ha
has

V

Opi

invitato
invitedAccording to other analyses (Vergnaud 1985; Kayne 1994; Bianchi 1995; Guasti &Shlonsky 1995) the element which raises from within the embedded clause to the CP left
periphery area is the head of the relative itself, as the trees in (5) and (6) show:-285-

Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 3, Vol. 1(5)[DP Il[CP [NP ragazzoi] che [IP [NP ti ] ha invitato[DP The [CP [NP guyi ]that [IP [NP ti ] has invited

Maria]
Mary ]

DP
D°

CP

Il
The

C’

NP
ragazzoi
guyi

C
che
that

IP
NP
ti

I’
VP

I
ha
has

(6)

V

DP

invitato
invited

Maria
Mary

[DP Il[CP [NP ragazzoi] che [IP Maria ha invitato [ti]]][DP The [CP [NP guyi]
that [IP Mary has invited [ti]]]
DP
D°
Il
The

CP
NP

C’

C
ragazzoi
guyi
che
that

IP
DP
Maria
Mary

I’
VP

I
ha
has

V

NP

invitato
invitedti

Within the family of the raising approaches to relative clauses, the most familiar is
probably Vergnaud (1985) Head-Raising Analysis, according to which the relative head(ragazzo (guy) in (5) and (6))) is moved from the θ-position to Spec/CP.3
In this paper, I will adopt the basic insight of the raising analysis (Vergnaud 1985; Kayne
1994; Bianchi 1995; Guasti & Shlonsky 1995), slightly modifying the portion of the NP

3

Within this theoretical framework, Bianchi’s (1999) proposal emerges for analysing the raised headas a DP instead of a NP, by assuming the occurrence of a relative DP phonetically not realized.

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The Production and the Acquisition of Subject and Object Relative Clauses in Italian (I. Utzeri)

which raises. In particular, the analysis I will propose is based on the combination of theraising approach (Vergnaud 1985; Kayne 1994; Bianchi 1995; Guasti & Shlonsky 1995) andother theoretical assumptions (Belletti 2005). The syntactic derivation for restrictive RCs I
adopt is presented and described in detail in section 11.4
2. The Experimental Study
2.1. Aim of the Research
The main aim of this study is to assess the ability of Italian-speaking children to produce
subject and object restrictive relative clauses.
In order to do that, a group of Italian-speaking children and a control group of adults
were tested in two structured elicitation tasks. Children and adults participated to a Preference
Task and a Picture Description Task both testing the production of subject and object RCs.
The starting point of this work is Novogrodsky & Friedmann’s (2006)5 experimental
study on the production of SRCs and ORCs in a group of SLI Hebrew-speaking children,
aged 9;3-14;6, and one of typically developing children, aged 7;6-11;0. The results of bothtasks indicated that the SLI children have a deficit in the production of ORCs, while thechildren in the control group produce both subject and object RCs without difficulty. These
facts lead N&F to interpret the avoidance of ORCs as a sign of a linguistic deficit.
In this study I extended to Italian the same elicited production experimental paradigm
used by N&F (2006).
On the basis of their findings, I expected both Italian children and adults to show no
difficulty in the production of SRCs and ORCs as well.
But, as we will see, the results do show the opposite: both children and adults avoid
object relativization. Quite surprisingly, children produced more ORCs than adults.
However, both groups have no problem to form RCs on the subject. Indeed, SRCs areused also when not targeted (see section 3 for the results).
Before describing the participants, I would like the reader to notice that the present
experimental study is based on two different types of comparison. The former looks inside thesame language, comparing Italian child production and Italian adult production. The latter
analyses the differences among the early production of different languages, representing an

4

The syntax of relative clauses constitutes an extremely intriguing domain. Anyway, in this paper thequestion concerning the debate among different theoretical approaches to relative clauses formation
goes beyond the scope of this study. In this paper I will present the analysis I adopt, without describing
in detail all the other approaches.
5

Hence so forth, for simplicity, N&F (2006).

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Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 3, Vol. 1

original way to the comparative crosslinguistic research and offering the possibility to assess
the role of UG in L1 acquisition.
In particular, as we will see, the comparison between child production and adultproduction is a fruitful tool in order to define the variation area between early grammar andadult language.
2.2. Participants
In this study the participants were 41 Italian-speaking children attending the primaryschool (aged 6-11). All the children interviewed are included in the experimental group, withthe exception of a 6-year child who was excluded because she did not produce any relevant
sentences, probably because of her shyness.
The control group was composed by 30 Italian-speaking adults (age 15-73). Since all theadults produced the same pattern of restrictive relatives, it was not necessary to further divide
the control group into subgroups. It’s important to say that the participants in the control
group belonged to a very different socio-economic background. In particular, the level of
education widely varied from a subject to another one.
Last, but not least, the participants came from different geographical areas of Italy. Thatmeans they spoke different varieties of Italian.6
2.3. Procedure and Materials
Each of the participants was tested in a quiet room. No time limit was imposed during
testing, and no response-contingent feedback was given by the experimenter. All the
responses of the participants were recorded in a digital tape and then transcribed from therecording.
Subject and object restrictive RCs were elicited using two tasks: a Preference Task and a
Picture Description Task.
The material used for the Picture Description Task was originally designed and used by
Novogrodsky & Friedmann (2006).
2.3.1. Preference Task
In the preference task the experimenter presented two options and asked the participants
to choose which one they preferred. There were 12 questions per participant, 6 eliciting SRCs
and 6 eliciting ORCs.

6

I would like to point out that, since the control participants spoke different varieties of Italian, I takethe experimental results to be representative of the (elicited) production of Italian adult speakers ingeneral. Furthermore, the adult subjects all produced the same pattern of relative clauses.

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The Production and the Acquisition of Subject and Object Relative Clauses in Italian (I. Utzeri)

The questions eliciting SRCs described two children (two boys for a male participant,two girls for a female participant) performing two different actions, as shown in Figure 2.
Elicitation of a subject relative:
Ci sono due bambine. Una bambina sta leggendo una storia, l’ altrabambina sta ascoltando una storia. Quale bambina preferiresti essere?
Inizia con “( Preferirei essere) la bambina che...

Figure 1.

‘There are two children. One child is reading a story, the other child islistening to a story. Which child would you rather be? Start with “( Iwould rather be) the child that...’Target answer SRC: Il bambino che sta leggendo una storia
The childthat is reading a story

The questions eliciting ORCs described two children who are the themes of the sameaction performed by different figures, as shown in Figure 2.
Elicitation of an object relative:
Ci sono due bambine. La mamma sta baciando una bambina, il nonno sta
baciando un’ altra bambina. Quale bambina preferiresti essere? Inizia con“( Preferirei essere) la bambina che...

Figure 2.

‘There are two children. The mother is kissing one child, the grandfather iskissing another child. Which child would you rather be? Start with “( Iwould rather be) the child that...’Target answer ORC: La bambina che la mamma sta baciando
The childthat the mother is kissing

2.3.2. Picture Description Task
In the picture description task the experimenter presented picture pairs and described
them using simple sentences. Then the participant was asked about one of the figures and its
role in each of the pictures, as shown in Figure 3.

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Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 3, Vol. 1

Elicitation procedure: Ci sono un gatto e un cane. In un’ immagine il gatto sta mordendo ilcane, nell’ altra immagine il cane sta mordendo il gatto. Che gatto è questo (indicando il gatto
in un’ immagine)? Inizia con “Questo è il gatto che...” . E adesso, che gatto è questo(indicando il gatto nell’ altra immagine).
‘There are a cat and a dog. In one picture the cat is biting the dog, in theother picture the dog is biting the cat. Which cat is this (pointing to thecat in one picture)? Start with “This is the cat that...”And now, which
cat is this (pointing to the girl in the other picture)?’Target answer SRC: Questo è il gatto che sta mordendo il caneThis is the cat that is biting
the dog
Target answer ORC: Questo è il gatto che il cane sta mordendoThis is the cat that the dog is biting
Figure 3.

There were 13 picture pairs that elicited 13 SRCs and 13 ORCs. The order of the subject andobject relatives was randomized between the pictures.
Responses were analyzed for total number on target (subject relative for a subject
relative target, object relative for an object relative target).
Recall that in standard Italian the only one strategy to form subject and object RCs isleaving a gap, as we have seen in section 1.
Anyway, I also counted the ORCs with a resumptive pronoun and the ORCs with aresumptive DP as target responses. Actually, although resumption is not allowed as arelativization strategy in standard Italian, it is crosslinguistically attested in child production(Pérez-Leroux, 1995). Furthermore, as we will see in section ... , ORCs with resumptive
pronouns and ORCs with resumptive DPs are observable in other adult languages.
3. Results
First of all, what we can observe from the experimental data is that both children andadults avoided producing ORCs. The figures 5. and 6. respectively show adults’ andchildren’s production of ORCs respectively.

1%

22%

78%

99%

produced OR

elicited OR

produced OR

Figure 4. Adults’ production of ORCs

elicited OR

Figure 5. Children’s production of ORCs

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The Production and the Acquisition of Subject and Object Relative Clauses in Italian (I. Utzeri)

Anyway, a significant difference was observed between child production and adult production.
Indeed, while children produced 22% of the elicited ORCs (144/649), adults produced lessthan 1% of the elicited ORCs (3/440).
Unlike ORCs, both children and adults had no problem to form RCs on the subject. The
results indicate that the number of SRCs produced is higher than the number of elicited SRCs
in both groups on both tasks. As a matter of fact, in most of the cases SRCs were produced
instead of ORCs.
produced Rel
1000

elicited Rel

produced Rel

800

1000

600

440

400

800

440

649

649

600
400

200
0

1156

1200

879

elicited Rel

SR

144

200

3

0

OR

Figure 6. SRCs and ORCs produced by adults

SR

OR

Figure 7. SRCs and ORCs produced by children

In other words, what the data show is that both children and adult tended to turn ORCs into
SRCs. In section 5., the relativization strategies adopted by each group will be analyzed indetail.
Generally, SRCs were produced not only when targeted, but also when ORCs weretargeted. In contrast, ORCs were seldom used when targeted (less than 1% in adults’
production, 21% in children’s production) and hardly ever used when SRCs were targeted(adults:0%; children: 1%).
In addition, a small percentage (9%) of children’s ORCs were actually indirect object
relative clauses (IORCs), produced instead of SRCs (0,5%) and ORCs (1,5%).
SR

SR

OR
700

600

OR

630

600

440

439

IOR

526

500

400

400
300

200

200
100

3
0

SR

0

OR
target type

128
3

9

4

SR

OR
target typeFigure 8. Adults’ response types

Figure 9. Children’s response types-291-

Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 3, Vol. 1

4. Data Analysis
Surprisingly enough, adults produced only 3 ORCs out of 440 elicited. Two of themshow a resumptive pronoun ((7) and (8)), while the other one contains a gap (9). For
simplicity, the three ORCs produced by the control group are reported below:(7)

lo gnomo che lo copre il principe
the gnome that him wraps up the prince(Marco)‘the gnome that the prince wraps him up’(8)il gatto che
the cat thatlo morde
him bites

il canethe dog(Alessio)

nonno sta ascoltando
granddad is listening(Marilena)‘the cat that the dog bites him’
(9)la bambina che il
the childthat the‘the child that the granddad is listening to’
Although resumptive pronouns are not considered normative in standard Italian, they arewidely attested in spontaneous adult speech. The fact that only two ORCs with resumptive
pronouns ((7) and (8)) were found in adult elicited production could be due to speakers’
tendency to normativize their speech under experimental conditions.7 Except for these three
ORCs, adults produced only SRCs. Certainly, such a surprising result needs further survey.
Intuitively, Italian adult speakers probably master and use ORCs. Although I do not have thedata in order to state that adults produce ORCs in other experimental conditions, the fact isthat in this particular situation they were observed to avoid object relativization.
Consider, now, the child production of ORCs. We can classify them according to thepresence of a resumptive element. Thus, we have ORCs with gap vs. resumptive ORCs.
(10) is an example of ORC containing a gap, which is the only one relativization strategy
admitted in standard Italian:
ORC with a gap:(10) il bambino
the childche il nonno bacia __that the granddad kisses __(S., IV)

What emerges from this first analysis is a slight preference for resumptive ORCs, as shown infigure 10. If we look at the nature of resumptive elements, a further bipartition can be madebetween ORCs with resumptive pronouns vs. ORCs with resumptive DPs (see figure 11).

7

Guasti & Shlonsky (1995) make the same hypothesis to account for the different data between
spontaneous vs. elicited production in French.

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The Production and the Acquisition of Subject and Object Relative Clauses in Italian (I. Utzeri)

22%

40%

60%

78%

ORs with gap

ORs with resumptive pronoun
ORs with resumptive DP

resumptive ORs

Figure 10. ORCs with a gap vs. resumptive ORCs

Figure 11. ORCs with a resumptive element:
pronoun vs. DP

Most of the child resumptive ORCs show a resumptive pronoun, as in (11), while the others
are characterized by the occurrence of a resumptive DP, as in (12):8
ORC with a resumptive pronoun:(11) la bambina che la mamma la copre
the childthat the mother her wraps up(M.,II)‘The child that the mother wraps her up’
ORC with a resumptive DP:(12) la bambina che il nonno bacia la bambina
the childthat the granddad kisses the child(G.,I)

Before concluding this section, it is worth analysing the distribution of post-V subjects in
ORCs. As a matter of fact, both ORCs with gaps and ORCs with resumptive pronouns wereclassified according to the occurrence position of the subject within the relative clause.
Thus, we obtain two other bipartitions, as shown in figures 12. and 13.

37%

31%
63%

pre-V subject

69%

pre-V subject

post-V subject

Figure 12. Standard ORCs: pre-V vs. post-V subjects

post-V subject

Figure 13. ORCs with a resumptive pronoun:
pre-V vs. post-V subjects

To be clear, the example in (13) shows a ORC with a gap and a post-V subject, while in (14)is given an example of ORC with a resumptive pronoun and post-V subject:

8

Resumptive relatives are not allowed in standard Italian. Anyway, there is a relevant difference
between ORCs with resumptive pronouns and ORCs with resumptive DPs: the former is frequently
used at a substandard level by both educated and uneducated people, while the latter is never attested
at any level in Italian.

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Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 3, Vol. 1

ORC with gap and a post-V subject(13) la bambina chebacia il nonno
the childthat proj kisses the granddadj __(Gl.,II)

ORC with a resumptive pronoun and a post-V subject(14) il bambino chelo copre il suo babbo
the childthat proj him wraps up his fatherj(A.,II)

From this last analysis two interesting observations must be made.
First, the percentage of post-V subject used in ORCs with gap (37%) is similar to that ofpost-V subject in ORCs with a resumptive pronoun (31%). From here we conclude that theuse of post-V subject does not depend on the presence/absence of a resumptive pronoun.
Second, as figures 12. and 13. show, the number of ORCs with preverbal subject isdefinitely higher than the number of ORCs with postverbal subject in both cases.
The conclusion is that children find ORCs with preverbal subjects easier than ORCs with
postverbal subjects. This result must not be surprising. Indeed, the same observation was
found in other studies on the acquisition of RCs (Guasti & Cardinaletti 2003). In section 7.,
we will see how De Vincenzi’s (1991) theory can elegantly account for this finding.
Before concluding this section, it is worth recalling that Italian RCs with an embedded
NP in the postverbal position can be ambiguous between an object and a subject reading.
Actually, the Italian RC in (20), repeated in (22), can be interpreted as a subject RC (15a) or
as an object RC (15b) with the embedded subject in the postverbal position:(15) il bambino che pettina il rethe childthat combs the king(V., II)(15a) The child who is combing the king(15b) The child who the king is combing
It’s quite interesting to notice that children sometimes produced ambiguous RCs, as in(16), followed by another RC disambiguated by the (preverbal) position of the embedded NP,
as in (17).9(16) la bambina che bacia il nonno
the childthat kisses the granddad(17) la bambina che il nonno bacia la bambina
the childthat the granddad kisses the child

9(Gn.,II)

Notice that besides the position of the embedded NP, the RC in (24) is disambiguated also by thepresence of a resumptive DP.

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The Production and the Acquisition of Subject and Object Relative Clauses in Italian (I. Utzeri)

This observation strongly suggests that children ‘know’ that the RCs like (15) are ambiguous
between (15a) and (15b).
5. A Comparison between the Two Tasks
Comparing the results obtained in the picture description task with the results found in
the preference task, two interesting observations emerge.
First, what we found was that most of the children ORCs were produced in response to
the preference task (104 out of 144, 72%) and only few of them were given in response to the
picture description task (40 out of 144, 28%).
produced Rel
600

elicited Rel

produced Rel
760

800

518

elicited Rel

700
400

600

359

500
260

200

260

180

180

403

396

400

403

246

300

246

200
0

SR preference

SR picture

1

2

100

ORpreference

ORpicture

0

Figure 14. Adults’ production of SRCs and ORCs in both
tasks

104
SR preference

SR picture

OR preference40
OR picture

Figure 15. Children’s production of SRCs and
ORCs in both tasks

It is worth noticing that, unlike ORCs, the comparison shows no significant difference
between tasks in the production of SRCs.
The second interesting observation concerns the occurrence of post-verbal subjects. The
data clearly indicate that post-V subjects were used only in the preference task (except for 1case).
Description task

Preference task

ORCs with gap

ORCs with gap

1542

preV subj

postV subj

preVsubj

postV subj

14

1

22

20

Table 1. Standard ORCs with
pre-V and post-V subjects in the PDTTable 2. Standard ORCs with pre-V
and post-V subjects in the PT

In table 1. and table 2. we can see the distribution of post-V subjects in ORCs with gaps inthe description task and in the preference task.
Likewise, table 3. and table 4. show the distribution of post-V subjects in ORCs withresumptive pronouns in each task.

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Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 3, Vol. 1

Description task

Preference task

ORCs with resumptive

ORCs with resumptive

pronounspronouns

1949

preV subj

postV subj

preV subj

postV subj

19

0

27

22

Table 3. ORCs with a resumptive pronoun
with pre-V and post-V subjects in the PDTTable 4. ORCs with a resumptive pronoun
with pre-V and post-V subjects in the PT

What this analysis allows to conclude is that post-V subjects are used only in the preferencetask (except for one case).
Both these observations, namely, the fact that most of ORCs were produced in thepreference task, on the one hand, and the fact that post-V subjects were used only in thepreference task, on the other, strongly suggest that there must be a deep difference in thenature of the two tasks.
According to me this result can be due to the fact that the participant in the preferencetask is led to identify him/herself with the painted child.10
In a few words, I suggest that the different results obtained in the two tasks can be
accounted for by the higher level of involvement required in the preference task. In contrast,
the picture description task is a more formal task where the participant is just asked todescribe a situation that does not involve him/her.11
I would like to show some examples (18-20) from the corpus which clearly indicate thatthe participant is identifying him/herself with the painted child.
(18) il bambino che mi pettina il rethe child that me combs the king(A., II)‘the child that the king combs me’(19) il bambino che m’ asciuga l’ ippopotamo
the child that me wipes the hippo(G., II)‘the child that the hippo wipes me’

10

Notice that, in play context, the tendency to speak at the first person is very common in children
when they have to choose which character to be between two (or more) options.
11

It’ s quite interesting to note that passives are used more frequently in the description task by bothchildren and adults. The same result is found in child Hebrew by N&F (2006).

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The Production and the Acquisition of Subject and Object Relative Clauses in Italian (I. Utzeri)(20) il bambino che la nonna mi copre
the child that the grandma me wraps up(G., I)‘the child that the grandma wraps me up’
The ORCs in (18)-(20) show a mismatch concerning the feature of number: the DP (the child)is at the 3rd person, while the object clitic is at the 1st person.12
Before concluding this section, I would like to focus on the fact that children used
postverbal subjects only in the preference task. A plausible explanation to this finding could
be that the participant, identifying himself/herself with the painted child, makes his/her choiceaccording to the character that is performing the action on him/her. To give an example,
looking at the options given in figure 2., the participant will choose the child in the picture
above if she likes her mother to kiss her; in the case she prefers her grandfather to kiss her she
will choose the other option.
In brief, the occurrence of postverbal subjects in the preference task can be interpreted as
the sign that the child is focusing his/her attention on the subject of the action, rather than on
the object.13
6. Relativization Strategies
As we have seen in section 3., the data clearly indicated that both groups avoided to form
ORCs replacing them with SRCs.14 The figures 16. and 17. show that when ORCs weretargeted, both children and adults used SRCs in most of the cases (respectively 80% and 99%
of cases).
This section focuses on the strategies that children and adults used to turn ORCs into
SRCs.

12

Note that the participant has to start with ‘the child that’ (third person), but then continues thesentence using the first person.
13

The subject is here treated as the relevant focus of new information. I would like to point out that
this interpretation of postverbal subjects is in line with the hypothesis of (at least) a Focus position in
the right periphery dedicated to postverbal subjects (Belletti 2004).
14“[...] Subjects are generally more accessible to relativization, it is not unreasonable that somelanguages might require that non-Subjects be presented as Subjects in order for relativization to takeplace [...] (Keenan & Comrie 1979).

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Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 3, Vol. 1

99%
80%

100%

100%

80%

80%

60%

60%
20%

40%

40%

20%

1%

20%

0%

0%

target type OR
SRtarget type OR
SR

ORFigure 16. Child production: types of RCs produced
when OR is targeted (in percentage)

OR

Figure 17. Adult production: types of RCs produced
when OR is targeted (in percentage)

It’s interesting to note that the types of strategies used by children and adults were thesame. Anyway, a significant difference was found in the distribution of the different strategies,
as we can observe by comparing figure 18. and figure 19.
1%
2%
3%

1%

10%

7%

24%

23%

RO
RS [ricevere+DP]

93%
RS[passivo]
RS[cambio V]RO
RS [ricevere+DP]

RS[farsi+V]

Figure 18. Relativization strategies used by adults(where ORC is targeted)RS[passivo]
RS[cambio V]

36%
RS[farsi+V]

Figure 19. Relativization strategies used by children(where ORC is targeted)

What emerges from the data was that the most common strategy to turn ORCs into SRCs was
the passivization of the targeted structure in both groups.
The example in (21) shows how the subjects transformed an ORC (21a) into a SRC(21b) by passivizing the verb:(21) a. Target
il bambino che la mamma copre
the child that the mother wraps upb. Production
il bambino che è coperto dalla mamma
the child that is wrapped up by the mother
Comparing the two figures above, a crucial difference between child production and adultproduction came out with respect to the use of passive. Actually, while adults systematically
produced SRCs with passives where ORCs were targeted (93%), children used passives aswell as other strategies (36%).

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The Production and the Acquisition of Subject and Object Relative Clauses in Italian (I. Utzeri)

In other words, while in adult production the use of passive is absolutely the prominent
strategy to turn ORCs into SRCs, in child production it still remains the favourite strategy but
there are other strategies that are often used by children as well.
The second children’s favourite strategy to relativize the subject instead of the object
was the causative construction (farsi+V=to make oneself+V).
As the graphics above clearly indicate, causative constructions were given in response
instead of ORCs in 23% of cases in children’s corpus and in 3% of cases in adults’ corpus.
To give an example, (22b) was produced instead of (22a):(22) a. Target
Il bambino che il re pettina
the childthat the king combs
b. Production
Il bambino che si
fapettinare dalrethe child that himself makes comb by the king‘The child that makes himself comb by the king’Another strategy that children seemed to like in order to avoid ORCs was the use of‘receive+DP’. More clearly, ORCs were transformed into SRCs by substantivizing theembedded verb which appeared in the relative clause as a DP preceded by the verb ‘receive’,as in the example in (23),15 where the subject produced the SRC in (23b) instead of thetargeted ORC in (23a):(23) a. Target
il bambino che la mamma bacia
the child that the mother kisses
15

It is worth noting that not every verb is suitable to be transformed into a DP in Italian. Anyway,children seemed not to care about that. In their corpus I found some DPs that do not exist in Italianlexicon, as in (ii) or that are not used in everyday language, as in (iii):
(ii)

Il

bambino che riceve *il pettino (instead of ‘pettinata’)

The child

(iii)

Il

that receives *DPbambino che riceve (?) il trasportamento

The child(N.,I)(instead of ‘combing’)(G.,II)

that receives (?) the transportation

Note that in Italian the substantivized form of the verb ‘pettinare’ (to comb) is the feminine DP‘pettinata’(‘combing’). As we can see in (ii), the little child incorrectly used the suffix (-o) instead of
the proper morphological suffix (-ata) to derive the DP. It’ s important to point out that the suffix (-o)
is properly used to derive some other Italian DPs. A good example is represented by the verb
‘camminare’ ( to walk), which has two nominalized forms –o and –ata: ‘cammin-o’ (way) and‘cammin-ata’ (walk) are both correct Italian DPs (slightly different in meaning).

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Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 3, Vol. 1

b. Production
il bambino che riceve un bacio dalla mamma
the childthat receives a kiss by the motherThe ‘receive+DP’ strategy was quite frequent in child production (10%), while in adultproduction it rarely occurred (2%).
Finally, another device the subjects were observed to resort to, was the change of thetarget verb.16 As a matter of fact, they changed verb quite often, especially the children (7%),
in order to form the relative on the subject instead of on the object. An example is given in(24); (24b) was produced instead of (24a):(24) a. Target
Il bambino che il nonno ascolta
the child that the granddad listensb. Production
Il bambino che legge al nonno
the child that read to the granddad
7. Why are SRCs Easier Than ORCs? Minimal Chain Principle (De Vincenzi 1991)
Children’s and adult’s production of RCs has been extensively studied. These studies
have established that SRCs are easier to process than ORCs. In line with the results ofprevious crosslinguistic studies on RCs acquisition, the present research shows that Italianchildren find SRCs easier than ORCs. This observation is correctly predicted by De
Vincenzi’s (1991) theory of Minimal Chain Principle.
This theory explains why SRCs are easier than ORCs in terms of economy principles ofgap prediction that drive the analysis of filler-gap dependencies (De Vincenzi 1991).
As we can easily see in (25), the trace of the relative pronoun in a SRC is adjacent to the
pronoun, while in an ORC it is separated at least by the embedded subject and an embeddedverb, as shown in (26). Since shorter dependencies are computationally less demanding thanlonger dependencies and parsing strategies are driven by principles of economy (Guasti et al.
2005), the result is that SRCs are easier than ORCs because the filler gap distance in theformer is shorter than in the latter.
(25) [DP Il bambinoi] [CP che [IP [DPti] pettina il re]]][DP The childi ] [CP that [IP [DPti] combs the king]]]\________________/

16

(SRC)

Even though the subjects were asked to use the experimenter’s words, they often changed verb,
especially the little children.

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The Production and the Acquisition of Subject and Object Relative Clauses in Italian (I. Utzeri)(26) [DPIl bambinoi] [CPche [IP il re pettina [DPti]]][DPThe childi][CP that [IP the king combs [DPti]]]\_______________________________/(ORC)

Besides the fact just mentioned, De Vincenzi’s conjecture correctly makes another prediction,
namely, the fact that, in pro-drop languages, ORCs with a preverbal subject are easier than
ORCs with a postverbal subject.
It is worth recalling that the data concerning the production of ORCs with a gap
indicated that children use pre-V subject (36/57) more frequently than post-V subject (21/ 57).
The same finding came out from the data on the production of ORCs with a resumptive
pronoun: children seemed to find ORCs with pre-V subject (47/68) easier than those with
post-V subject (21/68).
In terms of filler-gap dependencies, MCP correctly predicts that ORCs with preverbal
subjects are easier to process than ORCs with postverbal subject. Indeed, while the former
involve only one chain, the latter involve two chains.
(27) [DPIl bambinoi] [CPche [IP la nonna sta coprendo [ ti ]]] (ORC with a pre-V subject)[DPThe childi] [CP that [IP the grandma is wrapping [ ti ]]]\____________________________________/
 1 gap (the moved DP) = 1 chain(28) [DP Il bambinoi] [CPche[IP prok sta coprendo la nonnak[ ti ]]] (ORC with a post-V subject)[DP Il bambinoi] [CPche[IP prok sta coprendo la nonnak[ ti ]]]\_______________________________________/
 1 gap (the moved DP)+ 1 gap (pro (Rizzi 1986)) = 2 dependencies
Note that in the structure in (28), we also have a filler-gap dependency between the embedded
DPk and an empty expletive pronoun in the embedded subject position (Rizzi 1986).
8. Some Aspects of ORCs Acquisition in Italian
Since Italian-speaking children’s production of SRCs does not show any discrepancies
with respect to adult’s production, in this section our attention will focus on the production of
ORCs.
As it often emerges from the studies on language acquisition, early production showssome discrepancies with respect to the target language. In the case of ORCs acquisition, a
specification is needed.
Indeed, in this case the adult production does not match with the target language. In
other words, Italian speaking adults are expected to produce ORCs but, on the contrary, adults
production is characterized by the (almost) absence of ORCs.

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This observation is relevant at least for two reasons. First, it recalls Chomsky’ s
dichotomy competence vs. performance: the fact that adults, under certain conditions, do not
produce ORCs does not mean that they do not master these structures, but rather it indicatesthat in that definite context they prefer to use other strategies (as much adequate as ORCs).
Second, it brings into light the (in)adequacy of using the term target-consistent within thecomparative analysis: how can we define the ORCs the children produced coherent or notcoherent with the adult (elicited) production, if in the latter ORCs are practically absent?
It seems to me that the distinction between competence vs. performance is particularly
relevant here: ORCs are targeted in the adult language but they are not found in the adult(elicited) production.
Quite surprisingly, what comes out from the elicited production data I collected is that,paradoxically, children produced more ORCs than adults and, in general, they produced morethan adults.17 Let me explain what this more is.
Besides ORCs with gap, that are expected in standard Italian, Italian children have been
observed to produce ORCs containing a resumptive pronoun as well as a resumptive DP.
Unlike languages like Hebrew, Yddish and Irish, standard Italian does not allow the use of theresumption strategy to form ORCs.
Anyway, a distinction between the two kinds of resumptives must be made. Indeed,
while ORCs with resumptive pronouns are (marginally) admitted at substandard level(colloquial spoken language), ORCs with resumptive DP are not used by Italian adultspeakers at any level.
The need to keep separate ORCs with resumptive pronouns from ORCs with resumptive
DPs reflects the different status they hold in adult Italian: the former are largely used byeducated and uneducated people at substandard colloquial/informal level, while the latter are
never attested at any level.
The state of affairs we have just seen directly lead us to the issue concerning how
children acquire language. I will try to better explain this crucial point.
As far the acquisition of ORCs with resumptive pronouns is concerned, since they arewidely attested in adult colloquial spoken language, one could say that these structures areprobably present in the linguistic input the child is exposed to. But what about ORCs withresumptive DPs? Since adults do not produce ORCs with resumptive DPs, how can Italianchildren use them, if they have never heard such structures before? Thus, we come to thewell-known problem about the poverty of the stimulus.
17

From the viewpoint of this work, it is not problematic at all to explain how children can produce
more than adults. Indeed, we assume that children are equipped from birth with UG Principles which
drive them in the L1 acquisition.

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The Production and the Acquisition of Subject and Object Relative Clauses in Italian (I. Utzeri)

One could reply that double relatives are an invention, or a mistake that Italian children
use to make. There are at least two observations which can be considered as evidences that
ORCs with resumptive DPs are not a random mistake, but rather a grammatically driven“invention” (Rizzi & DeGraff 1999).
8.1. Early Non-target ORCs are UG Consistent
As just mentioned, there are at least two facts that clearly show the grammatical natureof the discrepancies between child and adult production.
The first observation is that double relatives are found not only in child Italian, as thecurrent study and Guasti & Cardinaletti’s (2003) work report, but also in child French (Guasti,
Dubugnon, Hasan-Shlonsky & Schneitter 1996; Guasti & Cardinaletti 2003; Labelle 1990;
Ferreiro, Othenin-Girard, Chipman & Sinclair 1976), child English (McDaniel, Mckee &Bernsten 1998; P. de Villiers 1988) and child Spanish (Ferreiro, Othenin-Girard, Chipman &Sinclair 1976). In section 9. a crosslinguistic analysis provides a strong evidence in support ofconsidering resumption as an option available in early grammars. In this vein, it isconceivable to suppose that children temporarily adopt ultimately simplification strategies
that help the processing load of their “immature” production system.18
The second fact is that ORCs with resumptive DP are observable in other adultlanguages, like Lakhota, Hindi, Korean, Bambara. This fact strongly suggests that target–inconsistencies in development result from the exploration of the grammatical space definedby UG (Rizzi 2007).
9. Relativization Strategies in Early Systems: A Coherent Picture
The crosslinguistic comparison of ORCs in acquisition that this section is devoted to isbased on some elicited production data gathered in different languages.19
18

The fact that ORCs with resumptive pronouns/DPs involve more material to be pronounced do notcollide with my hypothesis that the use of resumption is a genuine grammatical option. Indeed, someother cases have been observed in which children pronounce more material than needed (see Thornton
1995; van Kampen 1997; Gutierrez 2004.).
19

In detail, I will consider here the results reported in Utzeri (2007) and Guasti & Cardinaletti (2003)
based on Italian data; in Guasti, Dubugnon, Hasan-Shlonsky & Schneitter (1996), Guasti &Cardinaletti (2003), Labelle (1990), Ferreiro, Othenin-Girard, Chipman and Sinclair (1976) based on
French data; in McDaniel, Mckee and Bernsten (1998), P. de Villiers (1988) based on English data; inFerreiro, Othenin-Girard, Chipman and Sinclair (1976) based on Spanish data.
It is important to point out that the aforementioned experimental studies all are based on elicitedproduction data. Anyway, it is necessary to take into account that these works investigate different
aspects of the acquisition of relative clauses (pied-piping (Guasti & Cardinaletti 2003), relative
pronouns (Guasti & Shlonsky 1995), resumptive pronouns (Pérez-Leroux 1995)). That the reason why
the data have been compared with the proper caution and have been taken into consideration only-303-

Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 3, Vol. 1

By making a crosslinguistic comparison a coherent picture comes out of ORCs
production in acquisition. Actually, children were observed to avoid object relativization
crosslinguistically. In particular, the crosslinguistic data indicate that children often turned
ORCs into SRCs. In other words, what we can state is that the tendency to produce SRCs
instead of ORCs is not peculiar to Italian children. The same result is reported in Guasti &Cardinaletti (2003) based on French and Italian data, in Labelle (1990) based on French data,
McDaniel, Mckee & Bernsten (1998) based on English data; Ferreiro, Othenin-Girard,
Chipman & Sinclair (1976) based on French and Spanish data.20
The following examples (29)-(32) show that children crosslinguistically produced SRCs
with passives ((29b), (30b), (31b), (32b)) instead of the targeted ORCs ((29a), (30a), (31a),(32a)).
(29) Child Italian (Utzeri 2007)
a. (targeted)il bambino che la mamma pettinab. (produced) il bambino che viene pettinato dalla mamma(30) Child French (Guasti & Cardinaletti 2003)
a. (targeted)le lion que le monsieur caresseb. (produced) le lion qui est caressé(31) Child Spanish (Ferreiro et al. 1976)
a. (targeted)el conejo lavò al burro que el elefante habia pateadob. (produced) el conejo lavò al burro que fué pateado por el elefante(32) Child English (P. de Villiers 1988)
a. (targeted)the cat that the boy brushedb. (produced) the cat that was brushed by the boy
From the data observed in (29)-(32) we can conclude that the tendency to turn ORCs into
SRCs by passivizing the verb is attested in the early systems of different languages.
As for the production of ORCs, the comparative analysis brings into light a coherent
picture: different language-speaking children were observed to produce the same pattern of
ORCs. The three types of ORCs found in child Italian elicited production, namely, ORCs withgaps, ORCs with resumptive pronouns and ORCs with resumptive DPs, are attested in early
those that were pertinent for the aim of the current study. Anyway, even though the experimental
methods were different, the results of these studies show similar trends.
20

In order to make the crosslinguistic picture as clear as possible, I report here the list of the age
range of the participants in each experimental study:
Child French: Guasti & Cardinaletti (2003), 4;5-7;3; Labelle (1988, 1990), 3-6; Ferreiro et al. (1976),
4-7;
Child Spanish: Ferreiro et al. (1976), 4-7;
Child English: P. de Villiers (1988), 5-6;Pérez-Leroux (1995), 3;5-5;5.

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The Production and the Acquisition of Subject and Object Relative Clauses in Italian (I. Utzeri)

grammar of French (Labelle,1988;1990; Ferreiro et al. 1976), Spanish (Ferreiro et al. 1976)
and English (Pérez-Leroux 1995).
(33) Child Italian (Utzeri 2007)
a. la bambina che il nonno sta baciando __the child that the granddad is kissing __(A., II)b. il bambino che il re lo sta pettinando
the child that the king him is combing(M., II)c. la bambina che la mamma asciuga la bambina
the child that the mother wraps the baby (up)(G., I)(34) Child French (a. and b. (Labelle 1988;1990); c. (Ferreiro et al. 1976)21)
a. C’ est la balle qu’ il dessine __This is the ball that he draws __b. la balle qu’ il l’ attrappe
the ball that he it catches(D, 3;6)(LE, 3;8)c. l’ ours pousse la souris que la vache lave la souris
the bear pushes the mouse that the cow washes the mouse(35) Child English (Pérez-Leroux 1995);
a. the one that he lifted itb. the one that the mailman is holding the baby(36) Child Spanish (Ferreiro et al. 1976)
a. el gato empuja al perro que el conejo lava al perro
the cat pushes the dog that the rubbit washes the dog(Child, 5-7)

(Lia, 4;5)(Kara, 4;11)(Child, 5-6)

In a nutshell, the crosslinguistic survey presented in this section gives a twofold contribution.
First, it shows that the tendency to relativize the subject instead of the object is not
peculiar to Italian children. In particular, the crosslinguistic data indicate that children
exposed to different languages resorted to the same kind of strategies in order to transform
ORCs into SRCs (cf. typically, passivization).
Second, it indicates that children produce the same pattern of ORCs crosslinguistically. It
is worth recalling that none of the languages considered here allows ORCs with resumptive
DPs at the standard level.

21

Unfortunately, exact ages of the children were not provided in Ferreiro et al. (1976); in some cases,
the year is indicated, whereas in others, just the age range (Pérez-Leroux 1995).

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To conclude, it is worth noticing that the fact that ORCs with resumptive DPs are notadmitted in the adult systems of the languages we analysed, on the one hand, and the fact that
ORCs with resumptive DPs are found in the early grammar of different languages, on theother, strongly suggest that the use of resumptive DPs as a relativization strategy is a genuine
grammatical option exploited in early grammars.
10. But Hebrew
Unlike Italian, French, Spanish and English-speaking children, Hebrew-speaking
children were observed to produce both subject and object RCs without difficulty (N&F,
2006). Comparing Italian and Hebrew elicited production data, what emerges is a sharp
difference with respect to the acquisition of relative clauses.22 Indeed, unlike Italian-speaking
children, Hebrew-speaking children were observed to form RCs on the object without
problem.
It’s very interesting to notice that Italian children’s production is quite similar to Hebrew
SLI-children’s production rather than to Hebrew typically developing-children’s production,
discussed in N&F’s (2006) article.23
For example, in the former, but not in the latter, SRCs with full passives are found, asin (37):22

Since the experimental paradigm I used is the same as in N&F (2006), Italian data and Hebrew data
can be directly compared.
23

To be clear, I’m referring here to the production of ORCs. The same similarity is not found in the
production of SRCs. Indeed, unlike Italian-speaking children, who were observed to produce only
target-consistent SRCs (that is with gaps), Hebrew-speaking children with SLI use both resumptive
pronouns and resumptive DPs to relativize the subject as well, as shown in (1) and (2):(1) * ze ha-leican she-hu soxev ta-dubi
questo il-clown che-egli trasporta ACC-l’orsettoquesto è il clown che lui trasporta l’ orsetto(2) * ze ha-yeled she-ha-yeled roxec et ha-aba
questo il-bambino che-il-bambino lava ACC il-babbo
questo è il bambino che il bambino lava il babbo

In Hebrew resumptive pronouns are admitted to form ORCs but not SRCs, while resumptive DP are
not allowed at all. Hence, both (1) and (2) are out in Hebrew.
In detail, N&F (2006) reported that in the picture task the SLI-group used resumptive pronouns in
the embedded subject position, as in (1), in 6% of the responses and resumptive DPs, as in (2), in 5%of the responses. The control group produced 2% and 0% of the responses respectively.

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The Production and the Acquisition of Subject and Object Relative Clauses in Italian (I. Utzeri)(37) Ha-aba she-nitfas al-yedei ha-yeled
the-father that-caught by the-boy‘the father that is caught by the boy’ (Target: ‘the father that the boy catches’)
Regarding the use of passives, it is important to point out that the passive construction israrely used in Hebrew (N&F 2006).24 It is infrequent even in formal written texts, and isassociated largely with academic or journalistic prose (Berman 1979), and school-age
children use passives very rarely even in written texts compared to other languages (Jisa,
Reilly, Verhoeven, Baruch & Rosado 2002).25
Another strategy that is used by both Italian children and Hebrew SLI children in orderto turn ORCs into SRCs is the substantivization of the embedded verb which appears in therelative clause as a DP preceded by the verb ‘receive’, as in the example in (38) (see example
in (23) for Italian).
(38) ha-yeled she-mekabel xibuk
the-child that-receives a-hug‘the child that receives a hug’ (Target: the child that the mother hugs)
Regarding the production of ORCs with resumptive pronouns, which are grammatical instandard Hebrew, N&F (2006) found that both the SLI group and the control group produced
approximately one third of the target ORCs with a resumptive pronoun, with no significant
difference between the groups on the two tasks.
In (39) I report an example of ORCs with resumptive pronouns taken from N&F’s
corpus:24

The data gathered by N&F (2006) confirm this fact: even though their study could theoreticallyelicit passives, the children in the control group did not use passives at all. As regards the SLI
production, the SRCs with full passives occurred mainly in the picture description task (14%). In thepreference task only 1% of full passives are produced, and 3% of adjectival passives (ex. “The painted
child” instead of “the boy that the teacher paints”).
25

Given this state of affairs, it is even more surprising that SLI children produced passives in acontext where typically developing children did not. Hence, why did some children in the SLI groupuse passives? According to N&F, the fact that the SLI group used passives almost only in the moreformal task, the picture description task, could be interpreted as a result of the formal teaching ofpassive in treatment sessions of SLI.
Furthermore, it is necessary to know that Hebrew has four morphological forms for passive.
Three of the are ambiguous between verbal and adjectival passive; the fourth bears only the adjectival
meaning (Horvath & Siloni 2005; Meltzer 2005). Most of the passives produced by the SLI groupwere ambiguous between adjectival and verbal passives, but some others, even in the full passive
constructions, were of the adjectival-only type (N&F 2006, 18).

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Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 3, Vol. 1(39) ha-yeled she-ha-saba menashek oto
the-child that-the-grandfather kisses him‘The child that the grandfather kisses him’
If ORCs with resumptive pronouns are grammatical in Hebrew, ORCs with resumptive DPs
are not. Anyway, SLI children produced ORCs as in (35):(40) * ha-yeled she-ha-saba menashek yeled exad
il-bambino che-il-nonno bacia un bambino* il bambino che il nonno bacia un bambino (Target: the child that the grandfather kisses)
In brief, unlike Italian speaking-children, Hebrew speaking-children showed no difficulty toprocess ORCs. Intriguingly, the relativization strategies used by Italian children to avoid
ORCs are the same as those found in Hebrew SLI children’s production.
Before concluding this section, I would like to point out two observations. First, theavoidance of ORCs we found in both Italian children’s and adults’ production is in contrast
with Friedmann & Novogrodsky’s hypothesis which considers this avoidance of ORCs as asign of a linguistic deficit.
Second, we have seen that, while Hebrew children produced ORCs without difficulty
and did not used passives at all, Italian children avoided object relativization and usedpassives strategically to relativize the subject instead of the object. Because of that, we could
say that Hebrew and Italian are two “mirror languages” in this domain.
11. Theoretical Implications
Given the pattern of ORCs produced by Italian children, what I propose here is a unitarysyntactic mechanism which could account for all the three kinds of ORCs found in the corpus
in the most natural way.
The analysis of relative clauses I propose here is the result of the integration of several
ideas. The assumptions my proposal is based on are essentially the following:
1. A raising derivation of relative clauses (Kayne 1994, Bianchi 1999)
2. Copy+ deletion approach to movement
3. Belletti’s (2005) idea of a “big DP”
Let’s consider these three points in turn.
First of all, I will adopt here the assumption that relative clauses are derived by the
movement of the relative head (Vergnaud 1985; Kayne 1994; Bianchi 1995; Guasti &Shlonsky 1995).

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The Production and the Acquisition of Subject and Object Relative Clauses in Italian (I. Utzeri)

Unlike the traditional so-called a raising analysis, the idea adopted here is that the phrase
which is extracted from the site of relativization is not the NP, but rather a whole DP.
Consequently, it is necessary to assume a richer structure which could host a more complex
syntactic movement. Hence, I will assume that ORCs with gap, ORCs with resumptive
pronouns and ORCs with resumptive DP are derived exactly in the same way, namely by theraising of the whole relative head DP to Spec/CP and then to Spec/DP of the matrix clause.
Following Belletti’s (2005) analysis, we adopt the idea of movement as a two-step
operation, that is copy + deletion (point 2.). Given this framework, it is conceivable tosuppose that the difference among the three types of child ORCs may be directly lead to thelatter syntactic operation (deletion).
In a nutshell, the idea I present in this paper is that the difference in the derivation of
ORCs with gap (41), ORCs with a resumptive pronoun (42) and ORCs with a resumptive DP(43) is due to a different degree of deletion. As we can see in the structures represented below,
deletion is: complete in (41); partial in (42); absent in (43).
(41) [[DP Il bambino]i [CP [DP <il bambino>]i che [IP il babbo abbraccia [DP <il bambino>]i]][[DP The child]i [CP [DP <the child>]i that [IP the father hugs [DP <the child>]i]]DPDP
Il bambino

D’
D
°
Ø

CP
C’

DP

IP

C
che

DP
il babbo

I’
I

VP
V

DP

abbraccia
il bambino

As for resumptive relatives, following Belletti (2005), a doubling derivation is adopted(point 3.). Actually, the “big DP” in (42) originates both the relativized DP and theresumptive pronoun: once DP2 has moved to the left periphery it is deleted, while the clitic
pronoun (DP1) remains stranded within the VP area and moves to the designated clitic
position.
Put in these terms, resumptive relatives derivation seems to be very similar to Clitic Left
Dislocation. As Belletti (2007) points out, movement and doubling are involved in both cases.
For this reason, resumptive relatives can be amenable to a derivation closely parallel to the-309-Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 3, Vol. 1

doubling derivation of CLLD, modulo the different landing site of the relative head in the CP
left periphery (Belletti 2007).26(42) [[DPIl bambino]i [CP[DP<il bambino>]i che [IP il babbo lok abbraccia [DP1 tk[DP2<il bambino> ]i ]]][[DP The child]i [CP [DP <the child>]i that [IP the father him hugs [DP1 tk[DP2 <the child>]i ]]]‘The child that the father hugs him’
DP
D’

DP2
D°
il bambino

Ø

CP
C’

DP2

IP

C
che

DP
il babbo

I’
VP

I
V

DP1

abbraccia

DDP2

lo/luiil bambino

Unlike (41) and (42), (43) does not involve deletion at all of the position where the DP ismerged. Indeed, the relativized DP is phonetically realized in both the merge positions,
namely, in its original position and in the relativized DP position ( we have assumed to be thehighest Spec/DP).

26

In the case of CLLD, the dislocated phrase moves to a Topic position in the CP area (Rizzi 1997),
passing through a clause-internal VP peripheral Topic position (Cecchetto 2000), while in the case ofresumptive restrictive relatives, the relativized DP arises to the highest Spec/DP of the matrix clause,passing through the Spec/CP position.

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The Production and the Acquisition of Subject and Object Relative Clauses in Italian (I. Utzeri)(43) [[DP La bambina] [CP [DP <la bambina>]i che [IP il nonno bacia [DP <la bambina>]]][[DP The child] [CP [DP <the child>]i that [IP the granddad kisses [DP <the child>]]]
DP
D’

DP
la bambina

D°
Ø

CP
C’

DP
C
che

IP
I’

DP
il nonno

VP

I
V

DP

bacia
la bambina

To sum up, the proposal I suggested in this section has to be considered as an attempt to bring
the three types of ORCs back to the same syntactic mechanism, in order to account for thealternation of ORCs with gap, ORCs with resumptive pronouns and ORCs with a resumptive
DP found in the child corpus in a most natural way.
12. Concluding Remarks
To conclude, the results of the current elicitation experiment indicate that Italian children
and adults generally avoided to relativize the object by turning ORCs into SRCs. The
passivization of the embedded verb is the favourite strategy in both groups to transform ORCs
into SRCs. Anyway, while children resorted also to other strategies to relativize the subject
instead of the object (causative construction, ‘receive+DP’, change V.), adults sistematicallyused passives.
In line with data from previous elicited production studies, this research shows thatchildren find SRCs easier to process than ORCs and that ORCs with preverbal subjects areeasier than those with postverbal subjects. We have seen that De Vincenzi’s (1991) theory of
MCP correctly predicts these findings in terms of gap-filler dependencies.
By making a crosslinguistic comparison a coherent picture comes out of ORCs
production in acquisition. Indeed, children exposed to different languages (Italian, English,
French, Spanish) were observed to produce the same pattern of ORCs, namely ORCs withgaps, ORCs with resumptive pronouns, ORCs with resumptive DPs. This fact, together withthe fact that target-inconsistent ORCs (resumptive relatives) produced by children are-311-

Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 3, Vol. 1

observable in different adult languages (Bambara, Hindi, Korean, Lakhota), can be considered
as a strong evidence in support of UG and its involvement in L1 acquisition.
In particular, the experimental results support the idea that children are exploring
facilitating options in the grammatical space defined by UG. The fact that relativization
strategies that children used but standard Italian does not allow are observable in other adultlanguages strongly suggests that they are not random mistakes but rather genuine grammatical
options given by UG.
Last, but not least, it is important to recall that not all early systems behave like child
Italian, child French, child English and child Spanish with respect to ORCs production. As wehave seen, child Hebrew seems to contrast to the general finding that children avoid object
relativization. From the comparison between child Italian and child Hebrew a picture emerges
where Italian and Hebrew seem to be two ‘mirror-languages’ in this domain. Certainly, thislast point needs further research.

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