Development and representation of Italian light-fare constructions

The essay describes the study of the development and use of light fare 'do' constructions in Child-directed Speech and in Child Language with the twofold goal of showing that a Construction Grammar approach is viable, and of providing support to usage-based, functional predictions on language acquisition. The analysis of naturalistic data derived from the CHILDES database lead to two main findings: first, a representation of fare Light Verb Constructions as a family of constructions organized like a radial category is not only possible but more explicative, second, there exists a 'fare' pivot schema that children generalize at an early stage because it serves the purpose of naming new events, activities or situations.