Pragmatic language development in 18- to 47-month-old Italian children: A study with the Language Use Inventory

The study was designed to investigate pragmatic development and the ability to make comments/questions on social and non-social topics in Italian-speaking children aged 18-47 months. Parents of 190 children completed an adaptation of the Language Use Inventory into Italian. Overall, the children's performance on the subscales of the LUI-Italian investigating verbal communication increased, while the score on gestural subscales, with both an imperative and a declarative function, decreased with age. Specific analyses of comments and questions about things, self and other people showed specific age-related differences. No main gender effect was found, but an interaction of gender × age group is discussed. The article concludes with limitations and guidelines for future research.