Pragmatic Competence in a Chinese-Italian Bilingual Speaker with Mixed Language and Learning Disorders
Valentina Wang, Gaetano Fiorin, Maria Milan
The comprehension of scalar implicatures requires the integration of semantic knowledge and inferential processes, mechanisms that may be particularly vulnerable in bilingual individuals with language and learning disorders. This study investigates the pragmatic abilities of a 17-year-old Chinese–Italian bilingual adolescent diagnosed with mixed language disorder (ICD-10 F80.2) and mixed learning disorder (ICD-10 F81.3). The aim is to examine how these difficulties affect the processing of scalar implicatures. A truth-value judgment task adapted from Hu et al. (2019) was administered in two separate sessions in both languages (20 experimental items per language; five conditions: all true, all false, some false, some felicitous, some infelicitous). Responses to the existential quantifier some/yixie in pragmatically underinformative contexts were analysed. Results reveal a systematic tendency to accept underinformative statements in both languages, indicating a predominantly semantic interpretation of the quantifier. The participant demonstrates intact semantic competence and pragmatic knowledge that is accessible through metalinguistic reflection but not fully automatized in spontaneous comprehension. This dissociation between competence and performance is consistent with research on language disorders. The findings underscore the importance of integrating behavioural assessment with metalinguistic tasks in clinical evaluations of bilingual individuals with language disorders, as traditional methods may underestimate pragmatic abilities that emerge only under explicit reflection.
Keywords
Scalar implicatures; Pragmatic competence; Bilingualism; Mixed language disorder; Metalinguistic assessment.
