Giulia Mornati

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Giulia Mornati is a PhD student of the University of Milan-Bicocca. Her project, “Understanding word function in Italian children aged 12 to 24 months”, is under the supervision of Maria Teresa Guasti.

She graduated in Clinical Psychology, Development and Neuropsychology in 2014 at the University of Milan-Bicocca. Later she worked as a research assistant at the Child Psychopathology Unit of the IRCCS E.Medea – Associazione La Nostra Famiglia (Bosisio Parini, LC). She was involved in a research project under the supervision of Dr. Chiara Cantiani aimed at the identification of early neurophysiological markers for language and learning disorders and the different evolutionary trajectories in infants from 6 months of life.

During her PhD she will study the morphology in Italian children from 12 months old and in particular the comprehension of articles and clitics.

Upcoming Events

September 17, 2024
  • BIL Seminar: Margreet Vogelzang September 17, 2024 @ 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm Aula 3143 U6 Bicocca

    Introducing the concept of (bilingual) reference profiles: A cluster-analysis approach

    Empirical studies on bilingual children’s reference production have often focussed on comparisons with monolingual peers. In this talk, I will introduce the concept of “reference profiles”: Speakers may exhibit similar or different behaviours in reference production, independently of whether they belong to a specific group (e.g., monolinguals or bilinguals) or whether their production adheres to some norm.
    As an empirical example, I will present data from thirty-seven Greek-Italian bilingual children (Mage = 9;4, range 7;10-11;6) who performed narrative retelling tasks in both of their languages, as well as vocabulary tasks and various cognitive tasks. The data show that the children had a good mastery of reference (i.e. appropriately using null pronouns, full pronouns, or full nouns) in both of their languages. Using cluster analyses, two distinct reference profiles were identified. Further investigation showed that these profiles differed in both their sustained attention and in the use of overspecified REs in contexts where reference to the same referent was maintained. These results are interpreted in light of current cognitive theories of (bilingual) reference processing and emphasise the potential of (reference) profiles for the study of other domains beyond bilingual reference production.

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