A developmental study of subject and object relative clauses in Italian

In this paper, we aim at exploring the subject/object asymmetry by comparing the production of relative clauses by two groups of Italian children aged 5 and 9 years respectively. By focusing on quite different ages, we aim at providing some additional information about the development of object relative clauses. We will do so by using a different experimental set up than the one used in Belletti and Contemori (2010) and this might be the source of different outcomes and be revealing of some additional factor promoting the production of object relative clauses endowed with peculiar features. In most studies, subject and object relatives include reversible verbs with two animate arguments. Animacy has been claimed to play a role in the comprehension of object relative clauses by children (Arosio et al. 2011). In this study, we examine whether it also plays a role in production.