Verso la fossilizzazione. I processi di acquisizione dell’italiano L2 di giovani migrati filippini a Napoli

This paper deals with fossilization phenomena in a corpus of L2 Italian with Philippine migrants in Naples. Fossilization is the absence of progress in language acquisition despite the presence of favourable conditions, such as a continuous exposure to input, a strong motivation for learning and the opportunity of interacting with native speakers. Our research is an exploration of the interaction between linguistic, psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic factors which can be deemed responsible for fossilization in a L2 Italian corpus collecting linguistic evidence from three young Philippine migrants based in Naples. The data were collected in two different periods: at the beginning of 2012 and in the final months of 2015/first months of 2016. This lapse has allowed us to analyse the learners’ progress regarding their linguistic competence and evolution of their interlanguage towards the target language.