Gender agreement acquisition between N and ADJ by Brazilian children

Abstract

This article investigates the identification and processing of gender agreement in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), considering the elements of categories N and ADJ, and if there are differences in the use of these different cues (the final vowel of the N or in the final vowel of the ADJ) by children between 3 and 5 years old. Studies have investigated which elements in DP may be used as morphophonological cues by children between 18 and 42 months, for identification and acquisition of elements that manifest gender agreement (in the NP and in the DP), in languages such as French, Canadian French, BP, Spanish and Czech (VAN HEUGTEN; CHRISTOPHE, 2015; VAN HEUGTEN; SHI, 2009; CORRÊA; NAME, 2003; LEW-WILLIAMS; FERNALD, 2007; SMÓLIK; BLÁHOVÁ, 2018 ). Other have explored how children, between 30 and 33 months, attribute gender to pseudonouns, in BP and in Spanish (CORRÊA; NAME, 2003; TREJO; ALVA, 2013). The results show that children from 3 to 5 years old preferred the final vowel information to assign gender to the pseudonouns, with no significant difference between masculine or feminine conditions; they recognize the high pairing between the final vowel of nouns and grammatical gender and use this information to assign gender to new nouns.