I will present the results of a longitudinal study on L2 Italian verbal morphosyntax in low/non-literate learners involving the collection of adult migrants' speech in different stages of their acquisition. Data analysis allows us to verify the degree at which existing descriptions on L2 Italian also apply to these learners.
Italian research has provided wide descriptions of L2 Italian morphosyntax, but none of these studies assumed L1 literacy as an explicit variable in data collection. Limited literacy, however, is an important component of migrants' background and typically correlates with low levels of L2 oral competence. This might be due to low exposure to the target language, as migrants experience low interaction with local speakers resulting in low amount of linguistic input. Whether or not the lack of literacy further slows down the acquisition or produces different results with respect to those described in the existing literature still needs to be verified. To fill this gap, in 2017-2019 a study has been conducted which has involved the collection of interlanguage data resulting from the recordings and transcriptions of 20 young adult migrants' speech at different stages of their acquisition (13 months). The participants were literate and low/non-literate and were acquiring Italian outside classes and in conditions of low exposure to the target language. The analysis of this corpus, based on Klein/Perdue's (1997) Basic Variety approach, allows to: 1) verify the degree to which the existing descriptions of L2 Italian apply to low/non-literate learners; 2) analyse learners' interlanguages in the light of current insights on the role of literacy in L2 acquisition (Tarone/Bigelow 2004; Vainikka et al. 2017).
Klein, W./C. Perdue. 1997. The Basic Variety (or: Couldn't natural languages be much simpler?), Second Language Research 13(4):301-347.
Tarone, E./M. Bigelow. 2005. Impact of literacy on oral language processing: Implications on SLA research. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 25:77-97.
Vainikka, A./M. Young-Scholten/C. Ijuin/S. Jarad. 2017. Literacy in the development of L2 English morphosyntax. In M. Sosinski, Language and Literacy teaching LESLLA students, 239-250. University of Granada.
