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The Production of Pronouns and Verb Inflections by Italian Children with ASD: A New Dataset in a Null Subject Language

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Abstract

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.

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Fig. 1

Notes

  1. In Italian, with first-person pronouns and person-marking verb morphology bolded and second-person pronouns and person-marking morphology underlined: Ioprendole foto delle bambine e le mettoin quel tavolo, etuprendile foto dei bambini e le mettinell’armadio.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grants from the Fondazione ONLUS Marica De Vincenzi. We are thankful for Sabrina Pallavicini’s support (for allowing us to test in her kindergarten), and we are grateful to the clinicians of the Azienda Provinciale per i Servizi Sanitari Provincia Autonoma di Trento, particularly Dr. Stefano Calzolari. We also thank the children and families who took part in our research and Dr. Giulia Guglielmetti and Dr. Sophia Marlene Bonatti for data collection. We thank Dr. Richard P. Meier for the insightful observation about Gricean maxims.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Humanities, University of Florence, Via della Pergola 58-60, 50121, Florence, Italy

    Greta Mazzaggio

  2. Department of Speech Pathology & Audiology, Miami University, 2 Bachelor Hall, Oxford, OH, 45056, USA

    Aaron Shield

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  1. Greta Mazzaggio
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  2. Aaron Shield
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Contributions

GM conceptualized and designed the study. Material preparation and data collection were performed by GM. Data analysis and interpretation were performed by GM and AS. The first draft of the manuscript was written by GM and AS contributed to the write-up. All authors approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Greta Mazzaggio.

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Mazzaggio, G., Shield, A. The Production of Pronouns and Verb Inflections by Italian Children with ASD: A New Dataset in a Null Subject Language. J Autism Dev Disord 50, 1425–1433 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-019-04349-7

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