Corpus of Italian language for Preschoolers. Lexicon directed to Italian preschool children from 3 to 6 years collected from heterogeneous sources in Italian and Italian Sign Language

Abstract

The project aims to create a novel collection of linguistic resources for the lexical investigation of the language directed to preschool children aged 3-6 years (i.e., before entering primary school). These resources will include a corpus, the tools necessary to access and extract the information it contains, and a sample dictionary. The data will be collected from a diversified array of contexts and situations, including adult-child interactions, children’s books, cartoons and media. These resources will include both Italian language and Italian Sign Language (LIS) data. Beside not being currently available for this age range, these resources are innovative for multiple reasons that constitute the rationale of the project.