Studia Filologiczne UJK

Summary

The study presents experimental findings on new information subjects in L1 Italian L2 Polish. The main answering strategies that emerge in the collected data are discussed in light of recent studies within the cartographic framework (Belletti 2001, 2004, 2005). In null subject languages subject inversion is typically adopted in contexts in which the subject is new information. Different languages typically adopt different ways to answer the same question concerning the identification of the subject of the clause, when the answer is provided through a full clause. The present study is a Polish adaptation of the experiment elaborated by Belletti and Leonini (Belletti & Leonini 2004). The original version was created in order to observe the different answering strategies available in L2 Italian. The elicitation task used to collect the relevant data aimed at providing the correct discourse-pragmatic conditions for eliciting answers in which the subject is new information. The task consisted of 22 short videos, after each scene 1‒3 questions were presented and the participant had to answer to them. Also filler questions were included to distract the participant. The Polish adaptation of the experiment was carried out on a group of L1 Italian speakers with Polish as their second language.