The Syntax–Pragmatics Interface in Heritage Languages: The Use of anche (“Also”) in German Heritage Speakers of Italian
Anna-Maria De Cesare
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The present contribution compares the usage of the particle anche - and its different functions - in a corpus of (spoken) varieties of heritage speakers of Italian living in Germany (HABLA corpus) and native speakers of Italian living in Italy (LIP corpus).
In particular, the study has the merit of describing how heritage speakers of Italian use anche in great detail, providing new results for studies on information structure and text linguistics from the perspective of bilingualism. In addition, the contribution highlights the possible assertive role of the particle anche, a trait of considerable importance in the context of contact between Italian and German, the further study of which is considered globally useful in nourishing the debate on the specificities of information structure when it comes to contact between Romance and Germanic languages.
In the enclosed manuscript, some suggestions for the revision of the article in view of its publication have been made. As the authors will see, most of the comments concern section 4. “Materials and Methods”. Specifically, it is suggested that the section be enriched with further information on the choice of data, the general characteristics of the corpora and the selected speakers. Some formal interventions at various points in the text that could possibly make reading easier are also recommended (e.g. provide some additional graphs, give prototypical examples of the functions of anche under investigation).
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
thank you very much for your very insightful comments. Please find our answers and the amended manuscript in the PDF attached to this message.
The Authors
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This is an excellent paper, offering new insights both on Italian as a heritage language and as used in Italy (new data are provided on spoken Italian). The empirical data is extensive and the analysis concerns syntactic as well as prosodic features (the latter not as detailed as the former). Conclusions about the influence of L1 (or dominant languages) are nuanced and very sound.
I still have a lot of comments and questions on very specific points. Please revise the manuscript by considering the comments in the attached PDF document.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
thank you very much for your very insightful comments. Please find our answers and the amended manuscript in the PDF attached to this message.
The Authors
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
