Maruša Brežnik Dornik

Abstract
The paper investigates the production of third-person
dative (3DAT) and accusative (3ACC) clitic
pronouns in Slovenian school-aged children,
focusing on whether cognitive factors influence their
acquisition, despite the morphological similarities of
these clitics in Slovenian. Previous research in Italian
suggested that dative clitics in Italian are acquired
earlier than the accusative due to their morphological
differences, a pattern tested within the Slovenian
context. Using elicited production tasks with 71
Slovenian children, the study reveals that in Slovene
3ACC clitics are produced more frequently than
3DAT clitics, challenging the idea that acquisition is
driven solely by morphological complexity. The
research is framed within cognitive science, drawing
on Universal Grammar and connectionist models to
explore how cognitive processes, such as working
memory and language processing demands, interact
with linguistic structures.