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| 2. |
- Bardel, Camilla
(författare)
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La negazione nell'italiano degli svedesi : sequenze acquisizionai e influssi translinguistici
- 2000
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis concerns the development of negation in the Italian L2 of a group of Swedish adults who live in Italy and acquire the language by formal and spontaneous learning. Various negative expressions and the verbal system were studied in a longitudinal analysis of a corpus with 29 recordings of seven subjects. The recordings consist mainly of spontaneous dialogue. While the development of the verb morphology turned out to be rather similar in all the subjects, the placement of negation developed differently among individuals. Contrary to what may be expected, five of the subjects tended to place negation postverbally, a position which rarely appears in the target language and in other observed L2 learners of Italian. In the L1 (Swedish) negation is placed after the finite verb in main clauses. The postverbal negation appeared mostly with the verbs essere (be) and avere (have), which is a typical distinction of verb types found in many L2 learners of target languages with postverbal negation, and indicates that the negative particle is placed before lexical and after functional elements. This could be explained with the tendency found in early stages of L2 acquisition to place negation immediately before the element it primarily operates on (i.e. semantic focus, according to our analysis). The results show that there is no obvious relation between finiteness and the preverbal negation of the target language in the subjects. Instead, there seems to be a relation between the first indications of finiteness in non lexical (thematic) verbs and postverbal negation. An alternative development was found in a learner who had studied French before coming into contact with Italian. In order to test a hypothesis of cross-linguistic influence from previously studied languages, a cross-sectional study was carried out on a group of Swedish high school students. All the students who had studied French or Spanish before Italian had easier access to the preverbal position of negation, present in Romance languages, than the students who had studied German. According to the results, the general developmental sequences found in learners of languages with postverbal negation can also be found in learners of a language with preverbal negation if the L1 has postverbal negation. In addition, transfer from previously studied languages seems to interact with more general principles of development.
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| 3. |
- Barnohro Oussi, Broula, 1977-
(författare)
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Sentieri e radure : Le forme del cronotopo d'iniziazione in Alessandro Baricco
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of the present dissertation is to study the elaborations of the initiation myth in contemporary Italian author Alessandro Baricco. The theoretical and methodological framework consists mainly of Mircea Eliade’s phenomenological theory of initiation. It is argued that the categories of space and time are interdepent in religious thought and should thus be studied as a unit, through the notion of the chronotope. The dissertation therefore proposes to introduce the concept of the chronotope of initiation as an operative tool, the intersection of the theories of Eliade and Mikhail Bakhtin, for the literary subgenre of the initiation novel.A hermeneutical analysis of the novels Oceano mare, Emmaus and Mr Gwyn demonstrates that the initiation myth is present in all three novels. The symbolism of death and rebirth is coherently enacted as a movement via the categories cosmos-chaos-cosmos, for which the author uses the symbolism of the earth to define cosmos (regularity and structure) and water symbolism for the regenerating chaos (dissolution and renewal). The different chapters of analysis accentuate the interaction of space and time within the different phases of the initiation pattern: the profane, the threshold, the sacred, the centre (the place where the actual ritual is enacted) and the return, which are all defined as chronotopes.The analysis shows that although the chronotope of initiation – the concept intending the fusion of the temporal event of ritual at the spatial centre – assumes different forms throughout the corpus, its function remains unmodified, with its purpose being the creation of ontological change. In its inherent structure, the chronotope of initiation unites antithetical spatial and temporal characteristics. Spatially it unites infinite and dissolving chaotic space with the constitutive envelope or sacred vertical centre, and temporally it brings together the ultimative ontological change at a fixed, historical moment with the eternal, sacred, time opened by ritual, representing the coincidentia oppositorum of the sacred. The analysis also shows that the so-called “portraits of the ineffable”, present in all three novels, reflect the same qualities. As immanent works of art, they function as thresholds into the infinite.From a chronological perspective, the dissertation shows a modification of the initiation pattern in Baricco’s writing: from the classical form in Oceano mare, via a more realistic application in Emmaus, to the most elaborate, meta-literary adaption in Mr Gwyn. Nevertheless, the use of the pattern and its thematic coherence reveals that Baricco consciously elaborates on the pattern to suit the contemporary context.
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- Bernardini, Petra
(författare)
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L'italiano come prima e seconda (madre)lingua : Indagine longitudinale sullo sviluppo del DP
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis deals with the development of the DP (the Determiner Phrase) in bilingual first (2L1) and in adult second (L2) language acquisition of Italian, with a focus on a case study of Italian as a second first language. The thesis suggests that the bilingual children and the Swedish adult learners develop the Italian DP differently. The child acquiring Italian as a second first language develops Italian more like the adults, but he sets the parameters of the DP in an order different both from Italian as a first first language and from Italian as a second language in adult learners. Transfer is claimed to occur both in the boy who acquires Italian as a second first language and in the adults, but only with regard to the N-raising parameter (Cinque, 1995) in the child, and in all three parameters investigated in the adult learners. The empirical part contains three interrelated analyses. The first analysis deals with gender and number concord and development. The children and the adults differ in the order of development between gender and number: the children seem to acquire gender as an intrinsic feature of the Italian nouns. In the Swedish adult L2 learners, number is marked early, but gender remains problematic in all the recordings. In addition, transfer of the Swedish gender specification of nouns could be argued to occur in the adult L2 learners, but not in the bilingual children. The results may speak against theories of L2 acquisition where an initial absence of FCs is postulated and support theories where transfer and full access to UG are postulated. The results also speak in favour of a gradual development of phrase structure in 2L1 acquisition. The second analysis deals with the development and omission of determiners. With respect to the development of determiners, following our hypothesis concerning the setting of the Italian value of the determiner parameter (Bottari et al., 2001), determiners that are XPs should appear before determiners that are Xºs if transfer from Swedish occurs. This is borne out in the data, and an age difference is revealed. In the 2L1 children, the determiner that is an Xº (the definite article) appears before the other determiners (XPs), while in the adults, the reverse pattern is observed. Following our hypothesis concerning the Italian value of the determiner parameter, with respect to the universal determiner requirement, transfer of the Swedish value should imply omission of determiners in preverbal subject position. The transfer hypothesis is borne out in the adult L2 data, as they omit determiners in this position. The children omit determiners mainly in verbless utterances, but as soon as verbs appear, they supply them quite regularly. We argue that the adults transfer the way the determiner request is satisfied, namely with Nº to Dº movement instead of direct insertion of an element in Spec-DP or Dº. The children do not transfer this way of satisfying the determiner request, but omit determiners one at a time when their NPs are not yet arguments to verbs. The third analysis shows that word order of the DP is acquired differently by the child who has Italian as a second L1, as compared to monolingual Italian children, but in a way similarly to the adult L2 learners: qualitative adjectives are mainly positioned after the noun and possessives are only positioned after the noun in the boy who has Italian as a second 2L1 and in the adult L2 learners, whereas the monolingual L1 Italian children and the girl who acquires Italian as a first 2L1 position the qualitative adjectives mainly after the noun, and the possessive in both positions. We argue that the N-raising parameter is set later in the case of Italian as a second 2L1 and as a L2 in adulthood, due to influence from Swedish. In conclusion, the main results are accounted for if we assume that the initial state of 2L1 and L2 is fundamentally different: the 2L1 initial state is built on two lexicons, and only word order parameters may be subject to transfer, depending similarities in the surface word order in the two languages (Müller & Hulk, 2001). In adult L2 acquisition, on the other hand, all parameter values seem to be subject to transfer from L1, due to the fact that L2 initial state is built on the L1 lexicon (v. d. Craats, 2000).
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- Bloom, Karin, 1984-
(författare)
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Cordelia, 1881–1942 : Profilo storico di una rivista per ragazze
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this dissertation is to conduct a study of the history of the girls’ magazine Cordelia (1881–1942), founded in Florence by Angelo De Gubernatis. The analysis mainly focuses on the years 1881–1917; however, the latter period is also briefly treated. The theoretical framework consists of sociology of literature and gender history; the dissertation belongs to the field of history of publishing, which is integrated with a gender historical perspective. The methodological challenges faced when dealing with periodicals as research objects are also considered. In order to achieve bibliographic control and examine Cordelia’s contents and contributors, all issues of the magazine’s first 36 years were indexed. The study examines the commercial strategies of the magazine’s publishers, as well as the contributions of the chief editors and writers involved in the making of the magazine. Attention is drawn to the personal relationships between the individuals in these groups. As is shown, the magazine was not very successful in its first three years of publication, during the editorship of De Gubernatis. The two editors who followed, Ida Baccini and Jolanda (pseudonym for Maria Maiocchi Plattis), did succeed, however, in creating a familiar and attractive product for the young female public and to involve them in their magazine. Quantitative surveys of the contributors and contents have shown, for instance, that Baccini and Jolanda relied on regular contributions from relatively few writers and also published serial fiction to arouse the readers’ interest. Their comprehension of the potential of the periodical and the importance of their gender in addressing their readers, together with the capacity of long-time publisher Cappelli to develop commercial strategies to boost sales, seem to have been the reason for the longevity and success of Cordelia.
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| 7. |
- Eklund–Braconi, Paula, 1965-
(författare)
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Il linguaggio normativo delle Comunità europee : studi quantitativi e semantici sul lessico con particolare riguardo al concetto di ambiente
- 2000
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The main aim of this research is to present some aspects and linguistic characteristics of the language used in law documents of secondary legislation, issued in Italian by the European Community. The documents deal with questions regarding environmental politics and are part of a corpus created at the French and Italian department of Stockholm university.The work is divided into two main parts. The first part presents the results of the research, which in turn provide general information about the material presented. A chapter dedicated to statistical analysis also indicates how the various categories of words are distributed.The second part of this research concentrates on the concept of 'ambiente' which emerges from the documents. A semasiological analysis of the concept of 'ambiente' (eng. environment) follows the development of this word from when it first appeared up to the present day and there is also a lexical-semasiological study both of the single words and the syntagms which are connected to the semantics of 'ambiente'.This analysis clearly indicates that from a purely linguistic point of view, syntagms and not single words constitute the specialist element of the material examined. Furthermore, in most cases the meaning of 'ambiente' implicitly implies the idea of manmade alterations, usually linked (as can be seen by the widespread use of the neologism 'ecologia', eng. ecology) to an image of risk and negativity deriving from the shifting of an equilibrium.Finally, there is an analysis of nominal syntagms made up of qualifying adjectives and nouns. The results obtained from this analysis lead to the hypothesis that although the adjectives are qualifying, they do not have an attributive function. They are either strongly referential or deictic-anaphoric. Furthermore adjectives are often combined with nouns in syntagms, with varying degrees of cohesiveness, in order to form technical terms. However, despite this, there is abundant use of synonyms, probably for stylistic or rhetorical reasons.
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| 8. |
- Finozzi, Anna, 1991-
(författare)
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La letteratura postcoloniale italiana per l’infanzia (2010-2021) : Lingua, spazio, colore
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Although Italian postcolonial literature, defined as literature written by migrants and second-generation migrants in Italian, has been studied broadly at least since the 2000s, Italian postcolonial literature for children has almost completely been ignored. The only monograph that has dealt with this corpus is the groundbreaking E noi? Il “posto” degli scrittori migranti nella narrativa per ragazzi by Lorenzo Luatti published in 2010. Ever since then, with very few exceptions, there have not been any attempts to deal with this corpus. What has happened since 2010? Have postcolonial children’s books continued to grow in number? And what stories do they tell? To answer these questions, this dissertation analyses a corpus of texts published between 2010 and 2021. Out of these nearly one hundred books, thirty have been subjected to a close reading, resulting in analyses that are transdisciplinary and comparative in nature. I argue that the corpus shapes a postcolonial imaginary, which I refer to as a set of implicit or explicit images that strengthens the counter-narrative already created by Italian postcolonial literature “for adults”. In particular, I uncover how these books display the acquisition of agency by the characters and the rupture of the Eurocentric and adultocentric narrative to de-establish Italian collective memory. This is done along three main interpretative lines that structure the analytical chapters: language, space, and colour. After the introduction and the presentation of the theoretical framework, the second chapter focuses on the negotiation between Italian and the language of the Other. After arguing that the corpus often circulates within the Italian cultural panorama as a translated text, I investigate the strategies through which child characters exercise their agency through the appropriation of their names, their memories, and their stories to dismantle the binarism-based labels underlying their socially constructed identities. In the third chapter, I first concentrate on the intersection between critical geography and postcolonial studies; then, I explore how the child characters transgress boundaries, dissolve the geographic determinism, and evade adult and colonial surveillance by mapping the urban space with their own memories. A focus is also reserved for school as a place where children experience bullying, cyberbullying, and racism. In the fourth chapter, dedicated to colour, I show how the dichotomy darkness–badness is dismissed in the corpus through the exploration of human and nonhuman skin colours, both visually and verbally. The last part of the chapter is dedicated to the books that manage to eliminate colourism by dissociating colour from a “natural” meaning; indeed, they employ colours to explain context-oriented meanings which, once modified, can lead to changes.The dissertation concludes by stating how these books inform a postcolonial imaginary by discussing issues of race, gender, sexuality, ability, and mental health. In particular, the characters claim their agency by transgressing the physical and conceptual boundaries imposed on them by Western and adult oppression. The re-telling of memories and the insertion of silences and breaks enhance the necessity of re-thinking the sequence-based ideology on which History lies. Finally, I stress the need for more studies in these directions by highlighting the liveliness and dynamicity, as well as the social importance, of this corpus.
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- Garbelli, Marta, 1995-
(författare)
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La microsintassi degli antichi volgari settentrionali : Articoli e pronomi personali nella prosa lombarda e veneta nei secoli XIII-XV
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis investigates the microsyntax of articles and personal pronouns in the medieval varieties of Lombardy and Veneto (13th–15th century). The study combines functionalism and grammaticalization theories with the principles of pragmatics and textual linguistics. The investigation draws upon a corpus of 47 texts selected to ensure representativeness across various diaphasic and diastratic varieties.The emergence of the article was analyzed based on syntactic, pragmatic, and semantic constraints. The analysis shows that syntactic instances exhibiting stronger diachronic resistance to the grammaticalization of the article are prepositional phrases, enumerations, and vocative phrases. Concerning pragmatic constraints, the definite article is generally required in the presence of universally known and unique referents as well as with inalienable possession. With respect to semantic constraints, there is greater fluctuation in the alternation between zero article and the definite article. The semantics of special noun classes (namely proper names, kinship terms, and abstract nouns) exerts greater resistance to the grammaticalization of the determiner. Overall, by the 14th century in both Lombard and Venetan varieties, the definite article exhibits an advanced functional stage along the cline of grammaticalization. With respect to the indefinite article, uno is fully grammaticalized as a marker of specific indefiniteness while still competing with other constructions for marking non-specific indefinite referents. Moreover, the analysis attests to the early instances of partitive nominal constructions and partitive articles.Regarding the personal subject pronouns, their microsyntax was analyzed with respect to three interdependent phenomena characterized by complex processes of polymorphism, polyfunctionality, and reorganization of syntactic systems. On the expression of pronominal subjects (PS), the quantitative analysis highlights that the rate of PS expression is strongly dependent on the type of proposition, namely main, coordinate, and subordinate. Notably, the PS is generally expressed in main clauses and subordinate clauses, notwithstanding the presence of functional restrictions. This indicates a system where the expression of PS is typically obligatory in both clauses, conflicting with the so-called “asymmetric pro-drop” hypothesis. The analysis shows that the emergence of a new tonic paradigm of PS, developed from the oblique pronouns, is associated with special syntactic and pragmatic conditions. However, from the mid-14th century onward, the new tonic forms appear more frequently in the canonical subject position, signaling the rise of a new paradigm. This phenomenon coincides with the parallel emergence of subject clitics. Based on four syntactic criteria, the evidence hints at the development of a clitic subject paradigm exhibiting characteristics of a classic grammaticalization process such as weakening and cliticization.All in all, this thesis underscores the complex linguistic landscape of medieval Italy, and argues that the evolution of articles and personal pronouns in these substandard varieties aligns with the predictions from grammaticalization theories, providing insights into the dynamics of linguistic change.
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- Gudmundson, Anna, 1974-
(författare)
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L’accordo nell’italiano parlato da apprendenti universitari svedesi : Uno studio sull’acquisizione del numero e del genere in una prospettiva funzionalista
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study investigates the acquisition of grammatical gender and number agreement in Italian as a second language (L2). The theoretical framework is based on a functional approach that stresses the importance of form function mappings, cues, frequency effects and the statistical properties of the language input. The Competition Model is of particular importance and the Italian oral corpus LIP is used to make calculations that measure the validity, availability and reliability of the Italian noun endings. The data consists of 71 transcribed teacher-student dialogues with Swedish learners of Italian at Stockholm University. The results show that learners have problems with feminine gender in the plural and with ambiguous noun endings, i.e. cases where one form is connected to more than one function. These findings can be explained by cue competition and frequency effects and to some extent by a markedness effect. A second study with time (longitudinal development) and reliability of the noun endings (high or low) as independent variables and degree of accuracy as dependent variable showed a positive increase in accuracy rates over time, both for low and high reliability noun endings. There was also a significant interaction effect between the two independent variables according to which cases of agreement with low validity noun endings showed a higher increase in accuracy rates than high validity noun endings. This could be explained by the power law of practice, i.e. cases of agreement with high reliability noun endings soon reach a very high level of accuracy from which it is difficult to make further progress.
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