A aquisição de determinantes no português brasileiro

Abstract

The present work investigates the process of acquisition of determiners ‘o(s)’, ‘a(s)’, ‘um’, ‘uns’, ‘uma(s)’, and null determiners by children acquiring Brazilian Portuguese. The adopted perspective for the approach is that of Generative Grammar, observing the postulates proposed by the Minimalist Program. In line with exploratory research in language acquisition, naturalistic data from two babies aged between 16 and 27 months were analyzed. It should be noted that the data collection began two months after the literature has documented children’s sensitivity to the phonetic forms of functional categories (14 months). We also aim to classify the typology of the determiners explored, with the intuition that it may be possible to indicate the divergences and convergences of agreement in comparison to the Target Grammar (i.e., adult Portuguese) and attempt to provide answers, albeit incipient ones, to the incongruities committed by early speakers. Ultimately, the data indicated that the initial phases of determiner acquisition in Brazilian Portuguese involve a dichotomous process between stability (from Universal Grammar) and instability (the specific language with specific rules). In the explored typology, the divergences in agreement with the Target Grammar are consistent with what the theoretical framework suggested. The errors proved to be indispensable information for understanding the relationship between universality, the instinctive language apparatus, and the specificity of a living language, which is unique, situational, and circumscribed to its social environment.