Sulle strutture passive (e causative): note a partire da dati sull’acquisizione linguistica e sui disturbi specifici dell’apprendimento

This paper proposes some reflections on Italian passive constructions moving from data from recent studies on the difficulties encountered in the early stages of passive acquisition (in cases of typical language development) also found in the language behavior of subjects with learning disorders (in particular, dyslexia).
By analyzing the available data on the acquisition of Italian, on the one hand we notice the production of causative reflexive structures (like si-fare) instead of passive ones; on the other hand, when passive forms are produced, phrases with the auxiliary
venire are preferred to those with essere.
The aim of this study is to demonstrate how the two syntactic facts, only apparently independent, can be closely intertwined, if considered and observed within a functional synctactic framework.