Through two elicited production experiments we investigated how preschool Italian-speaking children access the left periphery of the clause with respect to topics in Clitic Left Dislocation (ClLD) structures. Since the discourse conditions of the experiments are felicitous for the production of passives as well, we also investigated children's…

Or is commonly understood to be a conjunction linking two or more constituents. Ending a sentence with "or" is considered non-canonical in written interaction, but ending a turn with "or" occurs regularly in spoken interaction. This dissertation investigates the interactional work of turn-final or as in "Did his oxygen get…

This dissertation aims to extend our knowledge of prosody--in particular, what kinds of information may be conveyed through prosody, which prosodic dimensions may be used to convey them, and how individual speakers differ from one another in how they use prosody. Four production studies were conducted to examine how various factors interact with…

"Although" is a frequently used subordinating conjunction in English. However, non-nativeness is often observed in Chinese EFL learners' "although" output during pedagogical practice. This paper aims at exploring the characteristics of Chinese EFL learners' "although" employment in Chinese EFL learners' writing. The…