ELICITED PRODUCTION OF WHO-QUESTIONS BY SCHOOL-AGED ITALIAN-SPEAKING CHILDREN

This chapter reports the results of an elicited production experiment run with Italian-speaking children (6;3-10;4 year olds) and a control group of adults. Participants were induced to produce potentially ambiguous Who V DP questions, i.e. questions where a singular verb agrees with either the wh- element (subject-extracted questions) or a singular postverbal subject (object- extracted questions). With respect to adults, children employ a wider range of interrogative structures in addition to Who V DP ones, especially in the object condition. This is similar to the findings by Guasti, Branchini, and Arosio's (2012) study of the elicited production of unambiguous wh-questions in younger children (aged 3;11-5;11). We describe similarities and differences found across the two studies, and discuss the nature of the differences emerged between subject and object interrogative sentences and between children and adults. Guasti et al.'s analysis in terms of strength of agreement and interference is adopted to analyze the productions by the children we test. Due to their older age, our children produce two additional types of interrogative structures, namely passive and embedded interrogatives, not attested in Guasti et al.'s results.