Linguistic awareness: diferent views

Abstract

The present work is a qualitative analysis of data collected during the application of morphological awareness tests, under the light of the Representational Redescription model (KARMILOFF-SMITH, 1986, 1992). These data are from Lorandi (2011). In the present work, we suggest an individual analysis of the responses, not a group analysis as in Lorandi (2011), trying to take into account the developmental trajectory of these participants in relation to their morphological knowledge, or, more specifically, to their skills on derivation, extraction of the base and inflection of nonce words, as well as their judgment on the acceptability of these nonce words, followed by an explanation of their knowledge about real morphemes, which were organized in morphological variant forms that were used by children in the process of morphological acquisition (LORANDI, 2007). We have randomly chosen two participants of each grade – from the 1st to the 4th –, all of them students of a regular school, whose data were analyzed to the purposes of this work. The results show that development is not age-related, a conclusion that is corroborated by the Representational Redescription model, and the results also show that other factors may interfere on the linguistic knowledge development and in its mental representation. These factors will be investigated in our current research. In our considerations about the results, we stress the relevance of a model that is capable of transcending the implicit-explicit dichotomy, as the RR model does, since it is efficient on the explanation of data provided by children.