The Acquisition of Italian

“The ease with which children acquire language has always seemed almost magical in comparison with the effort it takes in adults. This book, by two leading world-class linguists, documents language development in Italian, from the very early stages to the acquisition of all major syntactic structures and their semantics (and pragmatics), placing it all against the background of what is known about the development of other languages. And as they go along, Belletti and Guasti provide a series of detailed, and original hypotheses on what the ‘initial state’ of the child might be, and what changes take place, as children converge on the adult language. A great deal of their insight stems from the topic by topic comparison of ‘typical’ acquisition vis-à-vis acquisition by (L2) adult learners, and by linguistically impaired children. The results vividly show how exciting and revealing developmental studies can be, when insightful formal modeling meets careful data mining and controlled experimentation. A highly readable, truly informative, and remarkably thought provoking piece of work.”

“ The Acquisition of Italian is a comprehensive, up-to-date overview of grammatical development in Italian-speaking children. The authors do an excellent job of balancing empirical coverage of a range of topics with discussion of important theoretical issues, giving the book a wide appeal. The volume focuses largely on typical L1 acquisition, but also includes work on SLI and other impaired populations as well as L2 acquisition. I highly recommend this volume to anyone interested in grammar acquisition in young children, especially as viewed through the lens of Italian.”