Rhetorical questions (RhQs) are a complex phenomenon at the interface of pragmatics, prosody and syntax, which requires reasoning on intentions and goals, and which involves a mismatch between literal and intended meaning. In Italian, RhQs can be marked by optional particles and verbal morphology. We investigated when children aged 6-9 acquire the relevant patterns of optional modification and exploit them in the appropriate pragmatic context. In an elicited production study with 84 monolingual and 88 Italian–German bilingual children, we found that development in monolinguals was determined by age with a progression between 6 and 9 years, while bilingual development was influenced by proficiency in the heritage language and dominance more generally. These results are in line with Tsimpli's (2014) proposal that “very-late-acquired phenomena”, especially interface domains, depend on their timing in acquisition. Unlike for other pragmatic phenomena, such as irony and conversational competence, there was no evidence for a bilingual advantage.

中文翻译：

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以意大利语为传统语言的双语儿童的反问句习得

反问句（RhQ）是语用学、韵律和句法交汇处的一种复杂现象，需要对意图和目标进行推理，并且涉及字面意义和预期含义之间的不匹配。在意大利语中，RhQ 可以用可选的助词和动词形态来标记。我们调查了 6-9 岁的儿童何时获得选择性修改的相关模式，并在适当的语用环境中利用它们。在一项针对 84 名单语儿童和 88 名意大利-德国双语儿童的诱导生产研究中，我们发现单语儿童的发展由年龄决定，在 6 至 9 岁之间递增，而双语发展则受到传统语言熟练程度和更普遍的主导地位的影响。 。这些结果与 Tsimpli (2014) 的提议一致，即“非常晚获得的现象”，尤其是界面域，取决于它们的获得时间。与其他语用现象（例如讽刺和会话能力）不同，没有证据表明双语优势。