Irene Fioravanti- Doctor of Philosophy
- PostDoc Position at University for Foreigners Perugia
Irene Fioravanti
- Doctor of Philosophy
- PostDoc Position at University for Foreigners Perugia
Post-doctoral position | Email address: irene.fioravanti@unistrapg.it
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33
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Introduction
Irene Fioravanti's research interests include Corpus Linguistics, Psycholinguistics, Second Language Acquisition and Phraseology. Specifically, her work explores the processing and use of phraseological units in both L1 and L2 speakers, and the integration of psycholinguistic methodologies such as eye-tracking and reaction times with corpus-based approaches. She is currently working on a learner corpus-based dictionary and a psycholinguistic database of Italian collocations.
Current institution
Publications
Publications (33)
This chapter examines the integration of corpus linguistics and psycholinguistic methods, focusing on both the advantages and challenges in the triangulation of these two different types of data. We, then, focus on the study of collocational processing-a field that particularly benefits from the integration of these two types of data-highlighting h...
This poster reports on a study aimed at comparing AI vs. human performance in detecting and categorising errors in L2 Italian texts. Four LLMs were considered: ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and Llama3. Two groups of human annotators were involved: L1 and L2 speakers of Italian. A gold standard set of annotations was developed. A fine-grained annotation...
This paper reports on a study aimed at comparing AI vs. human performance in detecting and categorising errors in L2 Italian texts. Four LLMs were considered: ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and Llama3. Two groups of human annotators were involved: L1 and L2 speakers of Italian. A gold standard set of annotations was developed. A fine-grained annotation s...
Vocabulary knowledge has been shown to be a key component in language competence development and a reliable predictor of overall language proficiency (Qian & Lin 2020; Milton 2013). Lexical complexity, in particular, is one of the most popular constructs used in corpus-based analyses of L2 vocabulary knowledge. This contribution reports on a single...
Collocational priming is a priming effect induced by collocationally related words; it has been taken to explain the cognitive reality of collocation. Collocational priming has largely been observed in first language (L1) speakers, whereas work on the representation of collocation in a second language (L2) is still limited. In the present study, we...
Nel vasto panorama dell’apprendimento delle seconde lingue, l’italiano emerge ancora come una seconda lingua (L2) poco rappresentata e indagata. Questa monografia si propone di esaminare l’apprendimento dell’italiano L2 attraverso una prospettiva multifocale, concentrandosi sui piani morfosintattici, lessicali e testuali. Adottando metodologie prop...
We present an evaluation of three different methods for the automatic identification of candidate collocations in corpora, part of a research project focused on the development of a learner dictionary of Italian collocations. We compare the commonly used POS-based method and the syntactic dependency-based method with a hybrid method integrating bot...
The last ten years have seen an increased use of the eye-tracking methodology in the investigation of vocabulary processing in both L1 and L2. In particular, some of the advantages afforded by this method – such as, the ability to analyse multiple areas of interest (AOIs) and to distinguish be- tween early and late stages of processing – have contr...
Collocations are one of the most studied types of word combinations. Their intricate nature, based on varying degrees of restriction, begs the question as to how modifications in their typical form influence the way they are processed by native speakers and learners. In this study, an eye-tracking experiment was carried out. We compared native spea...
Lo studio presenta un’analisi linguistica e testuale di produzioni scritte di italiano L2, con particolare attenzione alle forme verbali usate dagli apprendenti. L’analisi linguistica ha riguardato il verbo da un punto di vista sia grammaticale sia lessicale. Inoltre, il verbo è stato osservato in una precisa struttura argomentale (Verbo + Oggetto...
This article introduces the CELI corpus, a new learner corpus of written Italian consisting of ca. 600,000 tokens, evenly distributed among CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) proficiency levels B1, B2, C1 and C2. The collected texts derive from the language certification exams administered by the University for Foreigners o...
Phraseological models distinguish word combinations in terms of lexical fixedness, a concept that refers to whether or not a word within a phrase can be substituted with a synonym. Seeking to shed further light on the issue of lexical fixedness, the present study explores the processing of Verb+Noun free combinations and Verb+Noun collocations by f...
A salient property used to distinguish word combinations (i.e., free combinations, collocations, and idioms) in phraseology is lexical fixedness (Howarth, 1998). Lexical fixedness refers to whether or not a word within a phrase can be substituted with a synonym. Phraseological models usually place word combinations on a continuum of lexical fixedne...
Word combinations (e.g., collocations, lexical bundles, formulae, etc.) are widely recognised as key components in second language competence development, as they aid language fluency, processing and use (Bybee, 2006; Ellis, 2012). Recent linguistic complexity research has thus introduced the construct of phraseological complexity (Paquot, 2019b)....
In the last decades, there has been a growing interest in the processing L1 and L2 phraseology. It has been argued that phraseological units are holistically stored and retrieved directly by L1 speakers, while learners tend to analyse them in a more compositional way (Wray, 2002; Van Lancker Sidtis, 2012). However, faster processing of phraseologic...
Il presente studio propone un’analisi del lessico della pandemia con lo scopo di individuare nuove collocazioni. Nello specifico, sono state prese in considerazione le parole più frequenti (nodi) della pandemia e sono stati realizzati i loro profili collocazionali, individuando i collocati a cui sono maggiormente associate e con cui ricorrono più f...
La competenza testuale, lessicale e morfosintattica rappresentano tre competenze importan-ti per lo sviluppo e l'apprendimento di una seconda lingua (L2). Se da un lato, la competenza testuale si sviluppa linearmente fin dalle prime fasi dell'apprendimento della L2, altrettanto non si può affermare per la competenza lessicale e morfosintattica. Gli...
Che cosa sono le collocazioni? Definite come combinazioni di due o più parole che tendono a ricorrere insieme frequentemente, le collocazioni presentano in realtà proprietà distribuzionali e lessicali complesse, sfuggendo a una precisa e univoca definizione. Rappresentano, inoltre, una sfida per gli apprendenti di una seconda lingua, nonostante sia...
In this demonstration, we present the main features of the CELI corpus, a new learner corpus designed to analyse Italian L2. The main novelty of this corpus is reflected in at least two aspects:
1. it is based on a balanced pseudo-longitudinal design;
2. the CEFR-level attribution of the texts derives from obtained language certification exams.
Wh...
In this poster, we present the preliminary findings of a single word lexical analysis based on the CELI Corpus (Spina et al., under review). The CELI corpus is a 600,000 word learner corpus of Italian, containing written texts produced by over 3,000 learners, and balanced with respect to the four CEFR levels B1, B2, C1 and C2. The texts were produc...
L’articolo descrive la progettazione, la realizzazione e le caratteristiche di un nuovo learner corpus di italiano L2: il corpus CELI. Il corpus raccoglie, sistematicamente, le produzioni scritte di apprendenti di italiano L2 che hanno superato le prove per la certificazione linguistica CELI dell’Università per Stranieri di Perugia in relazione ai...
Lo studio indaga la coerenza e la coesione in testi di scuola media e di scuola superiore. L’analisi si è concentrata sul piano della struttura del testo, su quello della pianificazione testuale e su quello lessicale, con un focus sulle unità fraseologiche. I risultati hanno mostrato che la coerenza è preservata nei testi di scuola media e di scuol...
Questo studio presenta un’analisi corpus-based dell’uso e della produzione dei connettivi e delle unità fraseologiche dell’italiano in apprendenti di italiano L2 di diversi livelli di competenza linguistica. I connettivi e le unità fraseologiche rivestono un ruolo chiave nell’uso di una L2. Da un lato, i connettivi aiutano gli apprendenti a organiz...
Le collocazioni sono spesso definite come combinazioni ricorrenti di due o più parole, caratterizzate da un’alta frequenza e da una forte associazione reciproca (Firth, 1957; Sinclair, 1991; Evert, 2007). La loro formazione può essere interpreta come il risultato di un uso ripetuto e frequente: più due parole ricorrono insieme ripetitivamente e fre...
Phraseological units (i.e., word combinations) are often distinguished in terms of lexical fixedness and compositionality. The former refers to whether or not a word within a phrase can be substituted with a synonym, while the latter indexes how much the individual meanings of individual words contribute to the overall meaning of a phrase. Word com...
The present study explores the processing of collocations and free combinations by first language (L1) and second language (L2) speakers of Italian. Phraseological models (Howarth, 1998; Ježek, 2005; Masini, 2009) distinguish word combinations in terms of lexical fixedness, which refers to whether or not a word within a phrase can be substituted wi...
Collocational priming is described as a priming effect induced by collocationally related words (Hoey, 2005), and has been taken to support the cognitive reality of collocations. Studies into this phenomenon have shown that collocational priming exists for L1 English speakers (Durrant & Doherty, 2010; Ellis, Frey, & Jalkanen, 2009; Cangir, Büyükkan...
The present investigation focuses on first language (L1) and second language (L2) speakers’ sensitivity to lexical fixedness and compositionality of Italian word combinations. Two studies explored language users’ intuitions about three types of word combinations: free combinations, collocations, and idioms. In Study 1, Italian Verb+Noun combination...
Collocational priming can be described as a priming effect induced by collocationally related words (Hoey, 2005), and has been taken to support the cognitive reality of collocations. Studies into this phenomenon have shown that collocational priming exists for L1 speakers (L1, Durrant & Doherty, 2010; Ellis, Frey, & Jalkanen, 2009; Cangir, Büyükkan...
The present research focuses on the acquisition of verb-noun word combinations by second language learners of Italian. The phraseological approach distinguishes free combinations, collocations and idioms in terms of lexical restriction. Overall, research suggests that idioms and free combinations are less problematic for learners compared to colloc...
The present research focuses on native and non-native speakers’ intuitions about Italian verb-noun word combinations. The phraseological approach distinguishes word combinations in terms of lexical restriction and compositionality. The former refers to whether or not a word within a phrase can be substituted with a synonym; while the latter has to...
The present research focuses on the acquisition of verb-noun word combinations by second language learners of Italian. The phraseological approach distinguishes free combinations, collocations and idioms in terms of lexical restriction. Overall, research suggests that idioms and free combinations are less problematic for learners compared to colloc...
