Edited by Larisa Avram, Anca Sevcenco and Veronica Tomescu
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 65] 2021
► pp. 109–132
This chapter focuses on the production of variable number agreement by Brazilian Portuguese (BP) speaking children/adolescents. Number agreement in BP can be redundant, with obligatory morphological plural marking in all the agreeing elements (standard variety), or non-redundant, with obligatory morphological plural marking on the determiner and optional plural marking on the noun and on post-nominal agreeing elements (non-standard variety). The results of an elicited production task are recapped here. A production model of number agreement on the DP is provided. It is argued that an underspecified morphophonological feature [±redundant] in the morphological component of the lexicon is required to account for optionality in number marking and for developmental changes regarding the expression of number agreement in speech.