Chi compie l’azione? L’applicazione del Competition Model su sordi italiani

This paper investigates the applicability of the Competition Model to the strategies
of sentence processing used by deaf learners of Italian. In order to find if the communicative
channel of the L1 influences the strength of the cues necessary to identify the agent
(word order, agreement, animacy, case and accent), 6 hearing Italians, 6 deaf (2 mild and 4
profound) with Italian as L1, and 6 profound deaf with Italian Sign Language as L1 were
administered a test consisting of written and signed items. The written test results show that
agreement is the strongest cue to agent identification, for both hearing and the mild-deaf
participants; word order is the strongest cue to agent identification for the profound deaf. The outcomes of the signed test show, conversely, that the agent identification is guided by word order for the mild-deaf subjects and by agreement for the profound deaf.