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COPULAS IN ITALIAN L2 EKATERINA GOLOVKO AND MARIA MAZZOLI

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the rate of use and omission of the Italian verb essere ‘to be’ in its copular functions in the speech of eight Italian L2 speakers from Ukraine and Moldova. They are female migrant workers, Russian L1 speakers, employed as caregivers by Italian families and long-term residents in Italy. They have no formal instruction in Italian L2, and they have diverse levels of integration into Italian society. We performed a multivariate analysis with Goldvarb X on a corpus of 45.000 words of transcribed speech, collected through non-structured interviews conducted in Italian. In this paper we demonstrate that although all the speakers show great variation in their language performance, they share the same Italian L2 linguistic system. They share the same linguistic conditioning since variation within the examined categories conforms to the same direction of effect. Also, based on the overall and relative rates of copula use in their individual speech, we are able to group the participants into two sets of “less proficient” and “more proficient” speakers. Finally, we observe that among the social factors examined, the level of integration into Italian society plays the most significant role in predicting the speakers’ variable performance.

KEYWORDS: copula, language variation, Goldvarb X, Russian L1, Italian L2.

1. INTRODUCTION *

Variation is an inherent property of human language, whether it be a speaker's first or second tongue. Inherently, the second language is particularly variable. This is especially true if we are dealing with untutored language acquisition or, rather, a system that does not have any formal external ‘normalization’ beyond communicative practices.

In this contribution we investigate language varieties that have formed over a lengthy period of residence in Italy among Ukrainian and Moldovan women working in close contact with Italian families. Since the fall of the former USSR, there exists a constant flux of feminine migration from

* We are grateful to the audience of the Workshop on Copulas held in March 2014 at the University of Bologna and to the reviewers who commented on this paper. The bulk of the present research was done within Dr. Golovko’s postdoctoral project “Contatto di italiano e di russo nell’immigrazione russofona in Italia”, funded by the University of Bologna, LiLeC, in 2011-2014 under the supervision of Dr. Monica Perotto.

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Eastern to Western Europe. According to the Dossier Statistico Immigrazione 2012, in Italy 32% of non-EU immigrants are from Ukraine or Moldova. These migrants are predominantly mature women facing the migration process on their own. In Italy, they provide assistance to elders, injured or dependent people, often living together with the patients they take care of, working 24 hours a day. They are commonly known as badanti.

In this paper, we consider the use and omission of the verb essere (“to be”) in its copular functions in learner varieties. We will address all copular uses of the verb “to be” (cf. Panunzi, this volume). The sample presents a high level of inter-speaker and intra-speaker variation, as the following examples show:1

(1) Questa [-] rumena. Questa E' moldava. Questo [-] città, no E' paese (E.) DEM Rumanian DEM COP Moldova DEM city NEG COP village ‘This is Rumanian. This is Moldovan. This is a city, this is not a village’ (2) Pizzerie prima ERANO italiani, adesso [-] tutti da Egitto. (E.) Pizzeria.PL before COP.PST Italian now all PREP Egypt ‘Before pizzarias were Italian and now everyone is from Egypt’ (3) Quindici anni fa la vita [-] molto bella in nostro paese. (I.) fifteen year.PL ago DET life very good PREP POSS country ‘Fifteen years ago the life was very good in our country’

In the sample the rates of correct use of the verb essere vary among individual speakers from highs of as much as 76.2% to lows of 19.6%. Variation transpires across all semantic sentence types, irrespective of the syntactic nature of the complement, the morphological form of the verb essere and the presence of markers such as negators. None of these factors have a categorical effect on the occurrence of the verb ‘to be’. This fact holds true for each speaker. We are interested to tackle this group’s performance from the point of view of variationist linguistics and to discuss the patterns of variation in the use of the verb in individual speakers as well as in the group.

Variationist tools are suitable for the analysis of such cases because they allow for the modeling of variable and changing L2 grammars where asymmetry between form and function can be observed (Young 1991, 1996). Numerous studies have shown that L2 variation is as systematic as that of L1, notwithstanding the persistence of developmental errors and processing 1 Speakers are identified through their initials. Information about speakers is provided in Table 1.

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errors (Dickerson 1975, Adamson & Kovac 1981, Adamson & Regan 1991, Regan 1996). The principle of multiple causes formulated by Young & Bayley (1996) describes interlanguage variation as constrained by multiple linguistic and social factors. In fact, the interrelation of social and linguistic factors in the process of formation of second languages or other non-native varieties is found to be crucial.

Following these theoretical assumptions, we intend to show here that: (1) variation in the use of the verb ‘to be’ in our Italian L2 sample is pervasive but constrained in a coherent and homogeneous way across speakers, and (2) in the relative ranking of the factor groups considered, the level of integration of the speaker into the Italian society revealed the greatest level of correlation with the patterns of correct use of the verb ‘to be’.

In section 2 we describe the sample in detail. In section 3 we show the data, circumscribe the variable context and lay out our hypotheses. In section 4.1 we show that a coherent linguistic conditioning permeates the speakers’ variable performance, and we motivate such conditioning. We address the issue of whether or not the L2 speakers share the same language system. In section 4.3 we show that among the social factors considered ‘integration into the host society’ is the most significant with respect to copula use. In section 5 we draw some conclusions.

2. SAMPLE AND METHODOLOGY

2.1 The sample

The Italian L2 data we are about to discuss was collected from a group of eight female Russian L1 speakers during non-structured interviews. Each meeting was recorded and transcribed to form our 45.000 word corpus. All interviews were conducted in Italian and proposed to the speakers as informal conversations to discuss their biographies, personal migration stories and their life in Italy. On some occasions we discussed their feelings about the Italian language. The speakers proved to be aware that their Italian is imperfectly acquired, and they are keen to improve it, in principle. Some of them remarked that the lack of formal training contributed to their imperfect command of the language and that they feel ashamed of the way they write. In the following quote R. talks about her experience:

(4) Perché, io ripeto, se noi non abbiamo fatto corso, questo tanto dipendi, perché io ho portato mio figlio a 15 anni, lui ha fatto scuola Gramsci. E lui fra tre mesi già cominciato parlare. […] Lui viene a casa mia, mangiamo

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insieme, quando qualcuno mi chiama al telefono e parla con me italiano lui: Ma’! Devi dire questo verbo! Quanti volti ti ho detto? Lui sa come si scrive, ma io tanti volti c’ho vergogna scrivere messaggio. Perché? Perché non conosco bene la grammatica e ho vergogna.

‘Because, I repeat, it matters we did not do any language course. I brought my son here when he was 15 and he went to High School Gramsci. Three months after he could speak Italian […]. Now he comes visit me, we eat together, when someone phones me and speaks Italian, he says: Mom! You need to use this verb! He knows how to write and instead I am often ashamed to write a text message. Why? Because I do not know enough grammar and I am ashamed.’

All the relevant information about the speakers is reported in Table 1.2 NAME ORIGIN AGE

UPON ARRIVAL

DURATION OF STAY

LANGUAGES EDUCATION INTEGRATION INTO ITALIAN SOCIETY

R. M. 35 14 R., M., U. H. school Work + friends t. U. 20 7 R., U. H. school Work + friends J. U. 38 10 R., U., other University Work + family E. M. 48 6 R., M. University Work + family I. M. 34 12 R. University Work T. U. 48 12 R., U. M. school Work L. U. 48 12 R., U. M. school Work + family G. U. 49 11 R., U. University Work

TABLE 1. INFORMATION ON SPEAKERS (10PT, SPACING 12PT, SMALL CAPS)

In Table 1 speakers are organized in decreasing order based on the overall rate of correct use of the verb essere (from R., the highest rate of correct copula, to G., the lowest rate of correct copula). We maintained a set of social parameters within the sample: the speakers share the same gender, profession and L1, they lack formal instruction in Italian L2, and are long-term residents in Italy.

Instead, as can be seen from Table 1, the speakers are differentiated with respect to other characteristics such as their level of education, their age upon arrival, the nature of their social network in Italy, and the other languages they speak apart from Russian. Those coming from Ukraine speak Russian and Ukrainian, which are very closely related Slavic languages. Instead, those coming from Moldova are bilingual in Moldovan and Russian

2 Abbreviations: Origin: M.= Moldova, U.= Ukraine; Languages: R.= Russian, M.= Moldovan, U.= Ukrainian; Education: H. school= High school, M. school= Middle school.

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(except for I.), which is interesting given that Moldovan is a dialect of Romanian, thus a Romance language closely related to Italian and typologically different from Russian (see Table 2 for the overview). During the interviews we paid particular attention to the speakers’ social network here in Italy in order to inquire which type of contact they have with native speech. We were interested to know if they have daily exchange with Italians only at work, if Italians are part of their families (husband or children) and, finally, if they have Italian friends and acquaintances. We considered that different motivations for language learning operate in such distinct contact situations.

The average length of stay in Italy is 10,4 years per speaker and these women have reached a remarkable level of “fluency” in their own idiolects, notwithstanding the diverse level of distance between their performance and the target language. The failure of these speakers in reaching a more target-like variety is due to the particular isolation of these speakers as migrants (especially right after arrival), lack of social motivation, and lack of exposure in the target language. In fact, the group of female caregivers is mainly in contact with their patients, elders or dependent persons who may be more fluent in some Italo-Romance dialects rather than in Italian (see example 14 in section 4.3).

2.2 Methodology

We isolated from the corpus 1.420 occurrences of the verb essere and we coded each occurrence according to a set of factor groups. The linguistic factors coded are: (1) semantic sentence type, (2) grammatical nature of the copular complement, (3) sentence polarity, (4) morphological form of the verb essere, (5) existential vs. non-existential sentence, (6) present vs. non-present tense sentence, and (6) type of subject. The social factors coded are: (1) individual speaker, (2) country of origin, (3) spoken language(s), (4) age upon arrival, (5) level of integration into Italian society, and (6) level of education. The full results of the multifactorial statistical analysis we run through Goldvarb X can be found in Golovko & Mazzoli (in preparation). Here we will make some fundamental claims on the homogeneous nature of the linguistic conditioning among our speakers (Section 4.1) and the role of social factors on the speakers’ variable performance (Section 4.3).

3. COPULAS IN THE SPEECH OF BADANTI: RATIONALE AND HYPOTHESES

In our sample all speakers use the Italian verb essere variably. Although the

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average rate of correct use of this verb in the corpus is around 46%, individuals range between 76.2 and 19.6%. From this perspective, the variability of the verb essere in our sample should be rightly addressed with the tools of variationist linguistics. In Graph 1 we summarize and compare the rates of correct use of the verb ‘to be’ for all the speakers.

GRAPH 1. RATES OF OCCURRENCE OF THE VERB “TO BE” IN INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS

3.1 The variable context: the copula

We examined locative, attributive and equative uses of the verb essere.3 We analyzed the verb “to be” in all and only its copular uses.

A copula is a verb that is necessary to certain sentence types but functions differently from ordinary verbs. The copula does not assign to its subject and complement thematic roles in the usual sense. The function of the copula is to designate the subject as the argument of the non-verbal predicate it introduces as its complement (Creissels 2001: 346-347). The copular complement can be semantically a locative, as in (5), a property item, as in (6), it can identify a general category, as in (7), or a precise referent, as in (8).4 (5) Lei con sua famiglia [-] là. (I.) she PREP POSS family there ‘She is there with her family’

3 We excluded all auxiliary uses and accounted only for verbal occurrences. We included cleft sentences. We excluded all existential constructions, namely all occurrences of the lexical entry esserci (BE.at, cf. Panunzi 2005, 2010). 4 But cf. Panunzi (this volume) for a different interpretation of locative sentences.

0  

20  

40  

60  

80  

100  

Copula (%) use by speaker

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(6) Da noi [-] una vita molto triste. La mia vita un po’ E’ triste. (K.) PREP us DET life very sad DET POSS life a little COP sad ‘In our country there was a very sad life. My life is a bit sad’ (7) Non ERA una materia molto importante. (J.) NEG COP.PST DET subject very important ‘This was not a very important subject’

(8) Questi SONO genitori suoi (t.) DEM COP parent.PL POSS ‘These are her parents’

The semantic and syntactic nature of the complements intervene and define the semantics of the sentence. Instead, the copular function appears to be purely formal and, for this reason, copulas have often been described as “meaningless lexemes” (cf. among others, Lyons 1986/1977: 471). However, the fact of not assigning thematic roles to their subjects and complements, which is a distinctive feature of even verbal copulas, should not be considered synonymous with semantic emptiness. In some cases their semantic contribution is limited to the tense, aspect and modality information (e.g. in Russian, cf. Letuchiy, this volume), but in many other cases their semantics is relevant (e.g. the case of the Spanish copulas ser and estar, cf. Silvagni, this volume).

The copula constitutes a “classic” sociolinguistic variable with a lengthy history in variationist studies, beginning with Labov’s seminal work (1966). Copula omission and variable use were largely studied for AAVE and other varieties of English (among others Holm 1984, Cukor-Avila 1999, Bender 2000, Weldon 2003, Herat 2005, Sharma & Rickford 2009). Since Labov, the attention focused on the following grammatical category as the most significant factor influencing the variable’s occurrence. Later, other scholars found factors different from the following grammatical environment relevant to copula omission. Walker (2000), for example, disentangled the role of prosody. Scholars working on language acquisition worked on copulas as well, paying particular attention to the semantic type of predicate (Individual-level vs. Stage-level), for example, Becker (2004). In this work we will consider existing studies on copula variability as well as the typological features of the L1-L2 pair.

The first language of all the speakers in this sample is Russian, which together with Ukrainian follows the Present Tense Parameter (Stassen 2004), i.e. do not use an overt copula in the present tense, as can be seen in Table 2:

TYPE OF ITALIAN RUSSIAN

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COPULAR STRUCTURE Equative Lui è il fratello di Ivan

he.3SG COP DET brother of Ivan On – brat Ivana He.3SG brother Ivan.GEN

Attributive Anna è molto bella anna COP very beautiful.F

Anna ochen’ krasivaya anna very beautiful.F

Locative I libri sono sul tavolo DET book.PL COP on.DET table

Knigi na stole book.PL on table.PREP

Past Locative

I libri erano sul tavolo DET book.PL COP.PST on.DET table

Knigi byli na stole book.PL COP.PST.PL on table.LOC

Future Locative

I libri saranno sul tavolo DET book.PL COP.FUT on.DET table

Knigi budut na stole book.PL COP.FUT.PL on table.LOC

TABLE 2. COPULAR STUCTURES IN ITALIAN AND RUSSIAN

Following Ferguson's (1971) classification, Italian and Russian present languages of different types: Italian has an obligatory overt copula in the present tense, while Russian does not have an overt copula. Of course, transfer constitutes an important factor in L2 acquisition (among others, Ellis 1994: 315f; Nicol 2001: 121f). Although in their first language the copula is not overtly expressed, they did not simply omit it in their Italian L2 but learned to variably insert it in their speech. We considered the presence of the correct morphological form of the verb essere in copular sentences as the application value, so we analyzed the data referring to “copula insertion”. Our aim is to discuss how speakers variably operate this insertion.

4. DATA ANALYSIS

4.1 Linguistic conditioning

Linguistic constraints operate in the same way for all speakers of a given linguistic variety or pertaining to the same speech community, regardless of the overall occurrence of the given variable in each idiolect (Guy 1980, Bayley & Langman 2004; Bayley 2005).

In our analysis we observe that although speakers vary greatly in the extent to which they use the target forms of the verb ‘to be’, the effect of each linguistic constraint is much the same for each of them, and consequently such constraints pattern with the group ranking. We will examine here the linguistic conditioning of the factor groups “semantics” and “polarity” across the speakers.5 In the charts below we appreciate the

5 Golovko & Mazzoli (in preparation) determine that the factor groups coding the “semantics” of the sentence and its “polarity” are the most significant in order to predict the application value of the variable rule. Instead, the factor group coding the

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coherence of such ordering across speakers:6

SPEAKER/ SEMANTICS

G. T. L. I. J. E. t. R.

Locative 17 17 42 25 * 69 70 93 100 Attributive 9 12 21 50 55 65 67 82 Equative 6 18 *

* 11 29 44 51 60 69

TABLE 3. PERCENTAGES OF CORRECT COPULA USE IN INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS ACROSS FACTORS

WITHIN THE CATEGORY “SEMANTICS”

SPEAKER/ POLARITY

G. T. L. I. J. E. t. R.

Negative 69 37 83 100 100 92 96 94 Positive 21 8 13 55 60 64 72 89

TABLE 4. PERCENTAGES OF CORRECT COPULA USE IN INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS ACROSS FACTORS

WITHIN THE CATEGORY “POLARITY”

Table 3 shows the marginal results (percentage of correct use of the verb within each factor) according to semantic sentence type; Table 4 shows the same according to the polarity of the sentence. The speakers are ordered along a continuum following the ascending order of the percentages in the “locative” row of the first chart. We immediately observe that the ordering is roughly confirmed in all rows; such order is also coherent with the ordering of speakers according to their overall rate of use of the verb “to be” as displayed in Table 1.

The general trend in Table 3 tells us that the verb “to be” is mostly used in locative sentences, less often in attributive sentences and even less in equative sentences. Speakers show diverse rates of occurrence (e.g. R. realizes 100% of locative sentences while G. only 17%) but, nonetheless, they generally respect the conditioning as expressed in (10): (10) locative > attributive > equative

For these Italian L2 speakers, the tendency to omit the copular verb can be generally attributed to transfer from the first language(s) (cf. Table 2). However, the speakers’ first language(s) are not concerned in the explanation of the implicational scale in (10), to which all speakers here syntactic nature of the complement (adjective, noun, adverbial or prepositional phrase) is not selected as significant. 6 Asterisks in Table 3 indicate exceptions to the linguistic conditioning generally observed.

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adhere.7 There is a typologically widespread semantic distinction first observed

in Stassen (1994) and formulated as the “permanency parameter” which associates copula absence with “permanent”, “essential” or “inherent” predicates and overt copulas with “accidental”, “temporary” or “unstable” predicates. The scale presented in (10) conforms to this general tendency, since locative predicates are less stable than properties, which are less stable than identity statements.

Table 4 shows the effect of sentence polarity on the relative rate of copula use. The pattern observed is immediate and suggestive. All speakers without exception conform to the same direction of effect, with negative sentences exhibiting a far greater rate of correct copula occurrences. Of course, this holds true also at the group level. The strong linguistic conditioning observed in the data is summarized in (11): (11) negative sentences > positive sentences

Moscati (2006) described surprisingly similar results. The author analyzed a corpus of early Italian L1 production and attested that although copula omission is a strong feature of early Italian grammars, the dropping option disappears (categorically) if the sentence is negated through the Italian preverbal negator non. We agree with Moscati (2006) that the strong correlation between presence of negative markers and presence of the verb “to be” in copular sentences should be regarded as a syntactic constraint. Many authors observed that different languages realize the Negative projection (NegP) in different positions of the structure (Ouhalla 1991, Zanuttini 1997). Italian has a preverbal negation and the order of functional projections is given here in (12), with the Negative projection preceding the Temporal projection (Belletti 1990): (12) NegP > TP > VP

Rizzi (1994) claimed that in early child language development, some

7 The conditioning fails to predict the relatively high rate of correct equative sentences for speaker T. as well as the relatively low rate of correct locative sentences for speaker I. We attribute this mismatch to the fact that speakers T. and I. exhibit exceptional behaviours. Speaker T. speaks a creative blend of Italo-Russian and behaves impressionistically oddly. Speaker I.’s linguistic conditioning is singular also for other categories within other factor groups. It is difficult to categorise her among the more proficient or less proficient speakers in this sample (cf. section 4.2).

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portion of the structure can be left out, with immediate benefit for the child in terms of cognitive saving. However, whatever point of the structure was interrupted, all lower projections should be maintained. We assume this holds true also for second language learners. The copula is located in the Temporal projection (TP) given the fact that the predicative function pertains to the locative, attributive or nominal complement. Child and adult second language learners do not always activate the TP, and this is also evident in their omission of functional verbs and auxiliaries as well as copulas. However, at least in Italian, activation of the NegP constrains (or better, favour in our case) the presence of the inflected forms such as copulas and auxiliaries.

4.2 Grouping of speakers

It is important to emphasize that we cannot assume that we are dealing with a real second language learners’ group, but rather we face individual learners whose grouping is fundamentally based on the sameness of social factors such as origin, L1, profession and country of residence. Interestingly, the speakers share the same patterns of variation and linguistic conditioning within the factor groups examined. Although this does not itself indicate their sociolectal characterization, still it proves that they share the same linguistic system for reasons related to universal patterns of markedness, general simplification strategies and relationships among structures in the particular language being acquired (Sharma & Rickford 2009: 55).

Moreover, Tables 3 and 4 and Graph 1 indicate that the speakers cluster quite clearly into two groups and this suggests two different stages of language acquisition. According to Graph 1, the group of speakers with lower rates of correct copula use is formed by G., L., T. and we call it “less proficient” group (medium overall rate of correct copula use equal to 22,5%). Instead, we call “more proficient” the group formed by J., E., t. and R (medium overall rate equal to 64,75%).8

To sum up, in the sample there are two distinct groups with distinct proficiency levels related to the acquisition of the verb essere, but their Italian L2 varieties are homogeneous in terms of linguistic conditioning within the most significant factor groups.

4.3 Social factors 8 We decided to single out speaker I. from the grouping because in her data the direction of effect within some factor groups does not match that of the other speakers and the group, as noted in section 4.1.

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As can be seen in Table 1 speakers differentiate in several social parameters, namely age, age upon arrival, type of integration into the host society, number of spoken languages and level of education. In Table 5 we listed the social categories taken into consideration and the relevant factors we coded within each factor group. 9

FACTOR GROUP FACTORS Origin Moldova, Ukraine Age upon arrival Under 40, Over 40 Integration into host society Work, Work and family, Work and friends Spoken language(s) Russian and/or Ukrainian, Russian and

Moldovan Individual speaker R., t., J., E., I., G., T., L.

TABLE 5. CODING OF SOCIAL FACTORS INCLUDED IN THE MULTIFACTORIAL ANALYSIS

We ran a multivariate statistical analysis and found out that education and country of origin were not selected as significant factor groups for the correct use of the copular verb essere (Golovko & Mazzoli in preparation). Instead, we understood that three factors have a significant impact on the correct use of the copular verb in our sample: the level of integration into the society, the age upon arrival and the previously spoken languages.

The age upon arrival constitutes an important factor as confirmed by a number of studies on SLA. In fact, most studies show that learners’ proficiency is to some extent influenced by their age upon arrival (Johnson & Newport 1991: 216; Bialystok 1997: 117). We divided the speakers in our sample into two subgroups, depending if they arrived in Italy under the age of 40 or after (cf. Table 1). Also, the language(s) previously spoken by the learners are predictably a significant factor in influencing the L2 acquisition. In our recoding, this factor group contains two factors: Russian and/or Ukrainian, on one side, and Russian and Moldovan (or others) on the other. Concerning the level of integration into the host society we considered in which type of network the speaker normally conducts her Italian interactions. In the recoding of Table 5 “Work” means that she has contacts with Italians only at work; “Work and family” indicates that she has an

9 We maintained preferably two or three factors per group to minimize interaction. Despite that, we could not process all social factors together in the same run because some groups presented interaction and the cross-tabulation of others resulted in empty cells. For example, there are no speakers who arrived in Italy under the age of 40 who have only work-type assimilation into the society, that is all of them have Italian friends or family. This type of interaction is motivated and predictable since those who arrived in Italy at a younger age were more interested in settling into a new society. Also, there are no speakers who speak Russian and Moldovan (a non-Slavic language) who have only work-type assimilation into the Italian society.

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Italian husband or boyfriend; “Work and friends” implies that she has an Italian network of friends and acquaintances, but no Italian member of her family.

Table 6 exemplifies that younger migrants, speakers of a Romance language, and more integrated migrants have better performances in the use of the copular verb. Thus, the related factors influence positively the acquisition of the verb essere.

FACTOR GROUPS N TOKENS

TOTAL NUMBER: 1420

%

1) Age upon arrival Under 40 387 66.0% Over 40 281 33.7% 2) Spoken languages Russian and Moldovan 394 63.8% Russian and Ukrainian 274 34.1% 3) Integration into the society

Work + friends 315 67.2% Work + family 262 47.0% Work 91 23.1%

TABLE 6. MARGINAL RESULTS FOR SOCIAL FACTORS

Since we could not process all the social factor groups together, we decided to perform several runs maintaining the same coding for the linguistic independent variables and introducing each time a different social factor group, in order to test their relative relevance against the linguistic factors. After several tests we assessed that the most significant linguistic factor groups are ‘semantics of the sentence’ and ‘sentence polarity’ (as observed here in Section 4.1). Consequently, we ran the software several times to test the significance of each social factor group together with the linguistic groups “semantics” and “polarity”. The factor group chosen as significant with the highest range among the social factors is “integration into society” as shown in Table 7:10

FACTOR GROUPS INPUT: .579 N: 1420

1) Integration into society Work and friends .769

10 In the multifactorial statistical analyses we included existential sentences.

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Work and family .485 Work .206 Range: 563 2) Semantics Existential .801 Locative .538 Attributive .389 Equative .334 Range: 467 3) Polarity Negative .731 Positive .467 Range: 264

TABLE 7. MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS OF LINGUISTIC AND SOCIAL FACTORS

Caregivers are very often isolated from society because of the typology of their work. This position restricts the process of integration and creates a vicious circle: speakers are isolated in their work place from a broader society and thus they cannot acquire Italian. Then, because of their imperfect acquisition of Italian they cannot expand their relationships to become more integrated. However, those who have Italian family members or Italian friends have opportunities to communicate in Italian outside of work on topics that presumably go beyond caretaking and daily housekeeping. For instance, speakers R. and t. have Italian friends and often spend their free time with Italians and not exclusively with their compatriots. These speakers present the highest rates of correct copula use as can be seen in Table 1. Instead, those who do not have any relationships external to their work have a very low percentage of correct copula use. In the following excerpt from an interview, L. is talking to her daughter t.: their lifestyles present crucial differences that influence the respective levels of proficiency in Italian L2.

(13) Tu andata al circo, guardata film, seduta la macchina vada con suo ‘coso’, amici, tu andata la discoteca, tu andata dove tu vuoi, io no carina mia. Io pazza. ‘You went to the circus, saw movies, went by car with your boyfriend and other friends, you went to the disco, you went wherever you wanted. And I did not do any of that, my darling. I [-] crazy’

G. (the lowest rate of correct copula use) is another speaker who lived

several years isolated with her patient and did not build her social network of acquaintances and friends outside her patient’s house. We report an excerpt of her interview in example (14). The woman she looks after speaks mainly

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in local dialect, which is a different language from Italian, and TV programs were the only source for her to learn Italian at first.

(14) A quando venuta già lavorare con signora Rina lei più parla dialetto per

quello mi difficile e noi sempre da sola a casa, solo televisione e basta. Televisione guardiamo già la vita in diretta, guardiamo troppo poca, e così. ‘When I came to work with Mrs Rina, she speaks mostly dialect, for me it is difficult, we are always home alone, only TV and that’s all. We normally watch ‘La vita in diretta’, we watch not enough [to properly learn], that’s how it is’

This speaker, G., is highly motivated: she writes down new words and

idioms while watching TV, she consults dictionaries and grammar books. However, the scarce input in the target language can be considered a reason for her imperfect acquisition of Italian L2, reflected in her low level of proficiency.

In the process of untutored language acquisition when speakers freely interact with natives, their distance and capacity to assimilate the culture is crucial for the process of “construction” of a new language variety. The nature of the contact with native speakers was found to be a crucial factor in a number of works (Bayley 1991; Regan 1995; Nagy, Blondeau & Auger 2003). One of the first to demonstrate and theorize the importance of the social context was Schumann (1978, 1986) who introduced the “acculturation model”. According to this model the process of acculturation, i.e. adaptation to a new society and culture, has been demonstrated as crucially linked to that of language acquisition. Schumann distinguishes between social and affective factors. Among the social factors he describes three different strategies of integration: assimilation, preservation and adaptation. “Assimilation” is when the learner group gives up its own lifestyle and values to adopt those of the TL (target language) group. “Preservation” is maintenance of its own lifestyle and rejection of those of the TL group. “Adaptation” means adjusting to the lifestyle of the TL group with maintenance of the original lifestyle for intra-group use (1986: 381). The speakers analyzed in this study generally conform to the adaptation strategy since they adapt to the lifestyle and values of the TL group, but maintain their original culture by interacting with fellow nationals. In fact, these speakers live (or spend the majority of their day) within Italian families, they adopt their lifestyle in order to conform to the requests of their employers, but they also tend to preserve their own habits and values. They all affirm that it is very important to maintain and not to forget their gastronomic traditions, holidays and music. According to Schuman (1986:

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381), “[t]his particular integration strategy yields varying degrees of contact between the two groups and thus varying degrees of acquisition of the target language”.

However, it is clear from the interviews that the degree of adaptation of each speaker varies because of their different type of integration into the host society. In this respect, another aspect highlighted by Schumann is “motivation” which he lists as one of the affective variables. Schumann divides all learners into two categories, “integratively motivated” and “instrumentally motivated”. Integrative motivation causes learners to aspire to become like speakers of the TL. Instrumental motivation is characterized by utilitarian reasons for learning the TL, such as economic reasons, and little interest in the speakers of the TL. Obviously, the first type of motivation is recognized as more powerful for the process of language acquisition (Schumann, 1986: 381).

All of the speakers in our sample were initially instrumentally-motivated learners since they had little interest in the people who speak the target language, but still wanted to “learn the language for more utilitarian reasons, such as getting ahead in [their] occupation or gaining recognition from [their] own membership group” (Schumann 1986: 381). All these speakers initially came to Italy in order to find a job and to help their families at home. For some of them the motivation remained exclusively instrumental (as in the case of G., cf. example 14) and their level of Italian remained scarcely sufficient for their job. For other speakers the motivation has switched to “integrative motivation” in the course of their stay, and this surely positively influenced the process of acquisition (as in the case of t., cf. example 13). The most proficient speaker in our sample, R., came to Italy 14 years ago, at the age of 35, to work as a badante. Her motivation to learn the language was initially instrumental to her work, but it changed when she brought both of her childrento Italy, who got married, settled and decided not to return to Moldova. Now she has Italian friends and sees herself as rooted in Italy and as an active member of her host society. According to our study, this is the major factor that fostered her acquisition of Italian to reach a relative high proficiency.

To sum up, for the group of speakers with this specific type of occupation and absence of formal instruction of Italian L2, the type of contact and also the amount of contact with the TL is of crucial importance to the process of Italian L2 acquisition, more important than the first language(s) spoken and the age upon arrival.

5. CONCLUSIONS

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In section 4.1 we claim that our Italian L2 speakers share the same linguistic system because they share the same linguistic conditioning within specific factor groups, i.e. the relative ranking of correct copula use with respect to the type of predicate and sentence polarity is the same for all the speakers. In 4.2 we showed that the speakers in our sample can be divided into the two groups of “less proficient” and “more proficient” speakers. In 4.3 we illustrated the results of the multivariate analysis we run on our corpus. We found that the type and amount of contact with native speakers is crucial to reach good proficiency. In fact, among the social factors, the level of “integration into society” proved to have the most significant influence on the correct acquisition of the copular functions of the Italian verb essere. The presence of a personal network of friends and acquaintances is the most positively influencing factor in this respect.

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Ekaterina Golovko University of Bologna

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Via Cartoleria 5, 40100 Bologna (BO) Italy katia.golovko@gmail.com Maria Mazzoli University of Milano-Bicocca Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo 1, 20126 Milano (MI) Italy tefra.tefra@gmail.com