Subject realisation in Italian L2 : a cross-sectional study of production data

In the development towards their second language (L2), quite early, as soon as they are able to distinguish between nouns and verbs as morphological categories, learners experience little difficulty in expressing the subject of their sentences - subjecthood being a grammatical function universally known in their first language (Ll). On the other hand, learners can be much slower in developing the ability to control the relationship between the structural properties of their sentences and the linguistic and extra-linguistic contexts in which to use them because subjects may be realized differently across languages. Our study attempts to trace the developmental path towards a native-like use of subject realization in Italian L2. With regard to this important issue, Italian is particularly interesting in so far as it is a pro-drop, head-marking language located towards the less configurational end of the typological spectrum, characterised by rich morphology and flexible syntax, highly sensitive to pragmatic and discourse choices. This may make the path from early expression to full mastery of subject realisation both particularly long and uncertain in its ultimate attainment, as Belletti et al. (2007) and Sorace (2011) have demonstrated.