A cross-sectional study on the use of “be” in early Italian

This work aims at studying the acquisition of copula and the auxiliary BE in Italian children. It will be shown that from the earliest stages the copula and the auxiliary BE are omitted at different rate, suggesting that children distinguish between the two grammatical categories. Moreover, on the basis of an analysis of ambiguous contexts (adjectival or verbal passives), it will be claimed that earliest passive are verbal and not adjectival passives. The data come from the spontaneous productions of 59 children (ranging in age from 22 to 35 months) involved in a cross-sectional study on language acquisition.