Acquisition of nominal and verbal number agreement in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the acquisition of number agreement by Brazilian children. Since there is variation in expressing number agreement in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), it seeks to analyze the impact of linguistic variation on language acquisition. To this end, an experimental study was carried out. An elicited production task was conducted with monolingual children from three to five years of age acquiring BP, aiming to investigate how they produce number agreement in nominal elements and in verbs. Following Yang’s (2002) proposal, I suggest that the variation found in participants’ productions for the noun phrase could concern the acquisition of two grammars, with parameters set differently. On the other hand, the results found for verbal agreement seem to suggest that the variation observed in child production is a reflection of children’s linguistic development process.