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On the Acquisition of the Syntax of Romance
Edited by Anna Gavarró
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 62] 2018
► pp. 31–56

Discrimination of passive predicates by Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children

| Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) | Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ) | Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)
| Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) | Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ) | Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)
| Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) | Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ) | Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)

This paper investigates the discrimination of passive predicates by children acquiring Brazilian Portuguese. A truth-value judgment experiment is reported here which assesses 3–4- and 5–6-year-olds’ ability to discriminate eventive/stative and eventive/resultative predicates. The results show an adult-like performance as far as stative and resultative predicates are concerned. As for eventive predicates, children’s performance has not reached the adult-standard, though they do discriminate eventive from stative/resultative predicates. These results are discussed in relation to previous ones with children acquiring European Portuguese and Catalan (Estrela, 2013; Gavarró & Parramon, 2017). A developmental account is provided which aims at reconciling the present and previous results.

Keywords: language acquisition, adjectival passives, verbal passives, Brazilian Portuguese
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.On the structure of adjectival passive sentences and its relation to eventive passives
  • 3.Previous results in favor of an adjectival interpretation of verbal passives
  • 4.Experimental study
    • Method
    • Results
    • Discussion
  • 5.A procedural account of the acquisition of passives
  • 6.Final remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 December 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.62.03lim
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