Resumptive Relatives and Passive Relatives in Italian Cochlear-Implanted and Normal Hearing Children

This study investigates two answering strategies (namely object relatives with resumptive elements and passive relatives) provided by a group of hearing-impaired children using a cochlear implant (CI) and two normal hearing control groups in a production task aimed at eliciting object relatives. in the CI group, we have observed inter-subject variability in the production of ORs (with gap and resumptive elements) and PORs. Indeed, the children who used the former strategy, never (or rarely) used the latter, and vice-versa. In the control groups, ORs decrease with age, while PORs increase, replicating previous results. The higher percentage of PORs as opposed to ORs in some of the CI children is probably linked to the good cognitive and linguistic development attained, which is consistent with their chronological age. Their target use of PORs also shows that CI children have attained a good competence of the passive voice. The use of ORs with resumptive elements (especially resumptive DPs) by some of the CI children is instead a sign of the linguistic delay often associated to hearing impairment. We suggest that they make use of a large spectrum of UG possibilities for a longer period than normal-hearing age peers because it takes more time for them to set the parameters of the target language. They indeed behave like younger hearing children.