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The present study has as object the category Tense in the acquisition of written Brazilian Portuguese by deaf people. The analysis of the phenomenon of acquisition of the Tense category investigated here was based on the generative theory, assuming the innatist proposition of language acquisition. In the context of the acquisition of L2, we assumed the hypothesis of indirect access to Universal Grammar (UG). Our corpus consists of naturalistic samples - texts produced in a school environment. Results indicate the occurrence of specific temporal operators of Libras (Brazilian sign language) in the interlanguage - the past and future lexical items and certain adverbs. We observed the occurrence of lexical operator for past Tense marking in verbs with non-punctual Aspect and the dispensation of this mark in cases of verbs with perfective Aspect, as occurs in Libras according to a study by Silva (2015) and Silva and Lessa-de-Oliveira (2016). This finding characterizes indirect access to the UG in the process of acquisition of L2. The written productions also displayed temporal flexion according to the parameters of Brazilian Portuguese and the use of auxiliary verbs to mark the future tense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes data on spontaneous writing produced by first, second and third graders who attend public and private schools in Pelotas, RS, Brazil. It not only approaches spelling of words that have complex syllables, i. e., those that do not correspond to the canonical structure CV, but also focuses on (ortho)graphic errors of complex onsets and branching rhymes. Data are discussed in the light of syllable phonology and studies of oral and written language acquisition. Results show that children exhibit similar behavior in both schools, a fact that reinforces the idea that linguistic knowledge is the main basis of early writing. Regarding Phonology, data clearly indicate children's own perception of possible codas, a fact that brings implications to discussions about both Portuguese acquisition and Phonology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The asymmetry between subject and object relative clauses has been attested in processing studies with adults (WANNER; MARATSOS, 1978; WARREN; GIBSON, 2002) and children (UTZERI, 2007; ADANI; SEHM; ZUKOWSKI, 2012). From the perspective of language acquisition, Friedmann, Belletti and Rizzi (2009) have suggested a formal treatment for this asymmetry in terms of intervention, and Costa et al. (2015) have expanded the proposal to PP relatives, considering data from European Portuguese. This study broadens that discussion by means of an elicitation experiment with 4 and 5-year-old children, speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. We contrast PP relatives with unergative verbs, showing intervention, and weather verbs, without intervention. Statistically significant differences between the types of verbs were obtained for younger children. We suggest that processing costs related to the availability of alternative less complex structures in the language is a major factor to be considered. This factor may impact the explanatory power of the intervention hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This experimental study focuses on the relationship between language development and the reasoning of first-order false belief (FB) standard tasks by children acquiring Brazilian Portuguese. We investigate to what extent mastering specific language structures, such as complementing syntax, affects the performance of this kind of reasoning by 3-4 year olds, as proposed by de Villiers (2004, 2005 and 2007). This study reconciles a minimalist conception of language (CHOMSKY, 1995-2001) with the Syntactic Bootstrapping hypothesis (GLEITMAN, 1990). We report results of an experimental activity that consisted of 3 pretests and a classic FB task of location-change, applied to 24 children aged 3-4 and 5-6 years old. The results of the experiments reported here are compatible with the working hypothesis, namely, that the complementing syntax is not a sufficient condition for the establishment of FBs reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the acquisition of a novel verb and the morphological processing of its inflectional variations by children acquiring BP. We consider the hypothesis that distributional cues guide the recognition of a novel word as a verb. Besides, the recurrence of verbal affixes leads to the verb's internal segmentation into root and affixes. An experiment with the Split-Screen Preferential Looking Paradigm technique suggests two-year-old children seem to acquire the novel verb's concept and treat its inflectional variations as words that share a common meaning. Similar experiments with the Picture Identification Task technique suggest that three-year-old children tend to map a concept into the novel verb, but seem to be confused when tested with its inflectional variations. Four-year-old children, however, seem to acquire the concept of the novel verb after a brief familiarization and to treat its inflectional variations as sharing a basic meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]