Pragmatic language development in 18- to 47-month-old Italian children. A study with the Language Use Inventory

The study was designed to investigate pragmatic development and the ability to make comments/questions on social and non-social topics in Italian-speaking children aged 18-47 months. Parents of 190 children completed an adaptation of the Language Use Inventory (O’Neill, 2009) into Italian by Longobardi and Laghi (2013). Overall, the children's performance on the subscales of the LUI-Italian investigating verbal communication increased, while the score on gestural subscales, with both an imperative and a declarative function, decreased with age. Specific analyses of comments and questions about things, self, and other people showed specific age-related differences. No main gender effect was found, but an interaction of gender x age group is discussed. We conclude with limitations and guidelines for future research