L1 proximity and syntactic complexity in L2 Italian acquisition

Abstract Studies on second language acquisition suggest that clitic pronouns are challenging syntactic elements for L2ers to acquire. This study examines the acquisition of Italian accusative clitics by Spanish and Swedish L2ers. Extending Romano’s (2020) research on Swedish speakers, it employs an oral structural priming task and a speeded grammatical judgment task to examine how L1 proximity and syntactic complexity influence clitic production and processing. Both tasks included clitic left-dislocated sentences in which the host verb (lexical, quasi-functional, or functional) varied according to the hierarchy proposed by Cardinaletti and Shlonsky (2004) . Results revealed that Spanish L2ers did not differ from natives but descriptively outperformed Swedish L2ers in production. Speakers’ performance varied across host verb types associated with different structural configurations. In processing, grammaticality was the main factor modulating acceptability across groups. These findings highlight the interplay between typological proximity and processing in the functional and lexical domains of L2 clitic acquisition.