Browsing by Author "Piccione, Mariapaola"

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Open Access
New insights into the typology of motion in the history of French: evidence from the manner verb lexicon
(2024) Piccione, Mariapaola; Rainsford, Thomas
Our study aims to investigate the Talmyan typology of motion encoding in the history of French focusing on testing Slobin’s (1997, 2004) hypothesis stating that the proportion of manner verbs is greater in s-framed languages and Schøsler’s (2008) hypothesis stating that the difference between s-framed and v-framed languages is to be found in the use of manner verbs and that the nature of the texts might play a role. Our study is methodologically innovative since it tests these hypotheses against a very large dataset using tailored measures. Our findings show an increase in manner saliency (as defined in Slobin 1997, 2004), contrary to what we would expect. This increase in the proportion of manner verbs might be explained by a more general increase in the overall lexical diversity of motion expression in French. Moreover, our results support Schøsler’s hypothesis, as textual factors affect the use of manner verbs.
Open Access
On the role of informal vs. formal context of language experience in Italian-German primary school children
(2024) Piccione, Mariapaola; Ferin, Maria Francesca; Furlani, Noemi; Geiß, Miriam; Marinis, Theodoros; Kupisch, Tanja
This study focuses on the contexts of language experience in relation to language dominance in eighty-seven Italian-German primary school children in Germany using the MAIN narrative task. We compare current language experience in the heritage language (Italian) and the majority language (German) in both formal and informal settings, and we examine the respective impact on micro- and macrostructure measures, including different language domains. Some previous findings emphasized the importance of language experience in formal contexts. By contrast, our results suggest that, in particular, language experience in informal contexts determines vocabulary and fluency in the heritage and majority language, while there are no effects of exposure on syntactic complexity. Furthermore, while the younger children are relatively balanced, the older children are more dominant in the societal language. Our findings imply that the use of the minority language in informal contexts should be encouraged to promote its development and maintenance.