Chapter published in:
On the Acquisition of the Syntax of Romance
Edited by Anna Gavarró
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 62] 2018
► pp. 91–116

Favorable processing conditions in the production of passive sentences 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) | Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ)
| Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) | Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ)
This study focuses on the production of passives by children (3–4 and 5–6 years old) under favorable conditions. An experiment is reported in which passives were elicited by priming in a Snap Game, where a central character was the patient of the events depicted in the cards to be described by the children. All children produced at least one passive and their overall number exceeded passives in prior studies; reversed roles were negligible. In a subsequent image description task, passives were elicited in less favorable conditions. Syntactic priming prevailed across tasks. A procedural account of the production of passives and of the effect of priming is provided, which supports the argument for children’s early competence to compute verbal passives.
Keywords: favorable processing conditions, discourse continuity, syntactic priming, verbal passives
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Portuguese verbal passives and the production of passives by Portuguese-speaking children
  • 3.Computing verbal passives in a psycholinguistic perspective
    • 3.1Syntactic priming
    • 3.2Discourse continuity
  • 4.The experimental study
    • 4.1First task
      • Method
      • Results
      • Discussion
    • 4.2A second task
      • Methods
      • Results
      • Discussion
  • 5.General discussion
  • 6.Final remarks
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 December 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.62.05lim
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