A aquisição de sândi vocálico externo em Português Brasileiro

Raquel Santana Santos

doi:10.25189/2675-4916.2021.v2.n1.id340

Abstract

In this paper I discuss the acquisition of three external vowel sandhi rules (elision, diphthongization, and degemination) in Brazilian Portuguese, based on production data by two children from 1;4 to 3;6 years old. I argue that the acquisition of sandhi rules is dependent on the acquisition of syllable structure. Children are shown to incorrectly apply elision over diphthongization when they start applying sandhi rules, because they do not master the syllable structures that allow them to produce diphthongs. I also show that the properties of the rules are not mastered simultaneously and that the properties related to higher prosodic domains are the first ones to be acquired.

Highlights

The acquisition of phonology has received much attention since the earliest studies on language acquisition, the focus has been almost entirely on phonological processes that occur in child language and not on the acquisition of the rules that describe phonological processes in adult language
I present the results on misapplication of sandhi rules found in the corpus and describe the stages that children seem to go through in the acquisition of these rules in BP
In the corpus we find three different kinds of misapplication of sandhi rules: a) application of rules in wrong contexts; b) application of a wrong rule; c) and wrong application of the rules

Summary

Introduction

The acquisition of phonology has received much attention since the earliest studies on language acquisition, the focus has been almost entirely on phonological processes that occur in child language and not on the acquisition of the rules that describe phonological processes in adult language. Little is known about the acquisition of betweenword processes that occur in adult language (see Drachman, 1973 on the assimilation of place of articulation between clitics and nouns; Demuth, 1993 on tonal alternations in Sesotho; Bernhardt; Stemberger, 1998 on between-word palatalization and tapping in English; and Newton; Wells 1999, 2002 on juncture processes). The first approach is represented by Stemberger (1989), who analyzed speech errors in adults' and children's utterances both within and between words, and Newton and Wells (1999, 2002), who studied children's production of assimilation, elision, and liaison between words. Assimilation and elision appear as early as the production of two-word utterances They acknowledge that there is a pattern of development in the realization of assimilation and elision, but attribute this pattern to imprecise gestural articulations, which need to be mastered by the child

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion