Strategie di lessicalizzazione: tipologia e apprendimento. Il caso dei verbi di moto

Development of motion verbs is explored on the background of Leonard Talmy’s “verb-framed” and “satelliteframed” language types on the basis of the longitudinal data of second language spontaneous learners of Italian with different first languages. The acquisition process appears to be mainly oriented towards the “verb-framed” type despite the ambiguous target language input. However the overall orientation of the acquisition process is punctuated by “satellite-framed” lexical types expressing direction out of a relatum. The “satellite-framed” lexical types as the learners’ autonomous productions are shown to result from the markedness relationships characterizing the direction out of a relatum with respect to the opposite direction. These formations are the basis for a convergence towards the target language ambiguous typology in the lexicalisation of path and deixis. These results allow a better understanding of the ways in which a language may drift away from a “verb-framed” type of lexicalisation of motion events, showing the contribution of second language studies to questions of theoretical relevance.