Vol. 9 (2023)
Articles

Disentangling Parsing and Grammar in Subject Pronouns Interpretation in Italian

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  • Elisa Di Domenico,
  • Carla Contemori Contemori
Elisa Di Domenico
Università per Stranieri di Perugia
Carla Contemori Contemori
University of Texas at El Paso
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/qulso-2421-7220-15163

Published 2023-09-30

Keywords

  • C-command,
  • Impatient Parser,
  • Italian,
  • Null Subject Pronouns,
  • Overt Subject Pronouns

How to Cite

Di Domenico, E., & Contemori, C. C. (2023). Disentangling Parsing and Grammar in Subject Pronouns Interpretation in Italian. Quaderni Di Linguistica E Studi Orientali, 9, 81–95. https://doi.org/10.36253/qulso-2421-7220-15163

Copyright (c) 2023 Elisa Di Domenico, Carla Contemori Contemori

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

In the present study, we investigate if and how null and overt subject pronouns interpretation preferences in Italian can be influenced by two factors: (i) the presence of c-commanding antecedents (Rizzi 2018) and (ii) the ‘impatient parser’ (Sorace and Filiaci 2006; Fedele and Kaiser 2014). To disentangle the effects of c-commanding antecedents and of the ‘impatient parser’, we compare experimental conditions differing for only one of the two factors. The comparison demonstrates that c-commanding antecedents influence the interpretation of null pronouns but not the interpretation of overt pronouns, while no effect of the impatient parser is found for either null or overt pronouns. In addition, we found that external referent interpretation preferences are modulated by Principle C effects for null and overt pronouns, albeit to different degrees. External referent choices also increase when an 

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