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Modelling the Developmental Path in the Acquisition of /L/-Final Irregular Plurals by Portuguese Children
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Chao Zhou; Maria João Freitas – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2025
Previous empirical research has shown that Portuguese children aged 4;0 to 6;0 are sensitive to the quality of stem-final vowels when acquiring the irregular plural forms of /l/-final words (acquisition order: plurals of /al, [epsilon]l, [Greek small reversed lunate sigma symbol]l, ul/ > plurals of /il/). This study presents a formal account of…
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Portuguese, Young Children, Language Acquisition
Word-Level Reading Skills of Brazilian Children with Developmental Language Disorder
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Talita Fortunato-Tavares; Debora Befi-Lopes; John Orazem; Aparecido Soares – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2024
Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) show a wide range of impairments, including poor pre-reading skills and decoding difficulties due to phonological deficits and such difficulties have significant repercussions on the acquisition of written language. However, evidence about reading processes and development is mainly available for…
Descriptors: Reading Skills, Foreign Countries, Language Impairments, Developmental Disabilities
Temporal Interpretations of Definite DPs: The View from European Portuguese Child Language
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Lungu, Oana – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2018
Sentences involving definite DPs can give rise to a "simultaneous" reading where the property expressed by the DP holds at the time introduced by the verb's tense or an "indexical" reading where the property expressed by the DP holds at the utterance time. This article discusses an experiment showing that children prefer…
Descriptors: Portuguese, Child Language, Form Classes (Languages), Verbs
Aspects of the Acquisition of Object Control and ECM-Type Verbs in European Portuguese
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Santos, Ana Lúcia; Gonçalves, Anabela; Hyams, Nina – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2016
We investigate the acquisition of sentential complementation under causative, perception, and object control verbs in European Portuguese, a language rich in complement types, including the typologically marked inflected infinitives. We tested 58 children between 3 and 5 years of age and 24 adults on a sentence completion task. The results support…
Descriptors: Portuguese, Verbs, Language Acquisition, Young Children
Feature Reassembly across Closely Related Languages: L1 French vs. L1 Portuguese Learning of L2 Spanish Past Tenses
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Amenós-Pons, José; Ahern, Aoife; Guijarro-Fuentes, Pedro – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2019
Considering the acquisition of past tense uses by L2 Spanish advanced learners with closely related L1s (French, Portuguese), this study attempts to identify factors associated with variability, such as negative transfer or interface integration. We report data on the acquisition, by adult L1 French and Portuguese learners at B2 and C1 CEFR…
Descriptors: Spanish, Portuguese, French, Second Language Learning
Semantic Features in the Acquisition of Mood in European Portuguese
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Jesus, Alice; Marques, Rui; Santos, Ana Lúcia – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2019
This article focuses on the acquisition of mood in early complement clauses of European Portuguese (EP). Two semantic features are involved in the EP mood system--epistemicity and veridicality. An elicited production task administered to 80 children aged 4 to 9 showed that, even though children use the subjunctive in [-- epistemic] contexts, the…
Descriptors: Semantics, Portuguese, Verbs, Preschool Children
Covert Contrasts in the Acquisition of English High Front Vowels by Native Speakers of Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish
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Song, Jae Yung; Eckman, Fred – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2019
The purpose of this article is to report results of an investigation into the production of a covert contrast by native speakers of Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish in the acquisition of the English distinction between the high front vowels /i/ and /?/. A covert contrast is a statistically reliable acoustic distinction made by a language learner…
Descriptors: Language Acquisition, Vowels, Korean, Portuguese
Indirect Positive Evidence in the Acquisition of a Subset Grammar
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Schwartz, Misha; Goad, Heather – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2017
This article proposes that second language learners can use indirect positive evidence (IPE) to acquire a phonological grammar that is a subset of their L1 grammar. IPE is evidence from errors in the learner's L1 made by native speakers of the learner's L2. It has been assumed that subset grammars may be acquired using direct or indirect negative…
Descriptors: Grammar, Native Language, Language Acquisition, Second Language Learning
Does Phonological Overlap of Cognate Words Modulate Cognate Acquisition and Processing in Developing and Skilled Readers?
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Valente, Daniela; Ferré, Pilar; Soares, Ana; Rato, Anabela; Comesaña, Montserrat – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2018
Very few studies exist on the role of cross-language similarities in cognate word acquisition. Here we sought to explore, for the first time, the interplay of orthography (O) and phonology (P) during the early stages of cognate word acquisition, looking at children and adults with the same level of foreign language proficiency and by using two…
Descriptors: Phonology, Language Processing, Second Language Learning, Native Language
Syntactic Structure and Information Structure: The Acquisition of Portuguese Clefts and "Be"-Fragments
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Lobo, Maria; Santos, Ana Lúcia; Soares-Jesel, Carla – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2016
This article investigates the acquisition of different types of clefts and of "be"-fragments in European Portuguese. We first present the main syntactic and discourse properties of different cleft structures and of "be"-fragments in European Portuguese, and we discuss how data from first language acquisition may contribute to…
Descriptors: Portuguese, Language Acquisition, Task Analysis, Language Processing
A Cross-Linguistic Study of the Acquisition of Clitic and Pronoun Production
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Varlokosta, Spyridoula; Belletti, Adriana; Costa, João; Friedmann, Naama; Gavarró, Anna; Grohmann, Kleanthes K.; Guasti, Maria Teresa; Tuller, Laurice; Lobo, Maria; Andelkovic, Darinka; Argemí, Núria; Avram, Larisa; Berends, Sanne; Brunetto, Valentina; Delage, Hélène; Ezeizabarrena, María-José; Fattal, Iris; Haman, Ewa; van Hout, Angeliek; de López, Kristine Jensen; Katsos, Napoleon; Kologranic, Lana; Krstic, Nadezda; Kraljevic, Jelena Kuvac; Miekisz, Aneta; Nerantzini, Michaela; Queraltó, Clara; Radic, Zeljana; Ruiz, Sílvia; Sauerland, Uli; Sevcenco, Anca; Smoczynska, Magdalena; Theodorou, Eleni; van der Lely, Heather; Veenstra, Alma; Weston, John; Yachini, Maya; Yatsushiro, Kazuko – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2016
This study develops a single elicitation method to test the acquisition of third-person pronominal objects in 5-year-olds for 16 languages. This methodology allows us to compare the acquisition of pronominals in languages that lack object clitics ("pronoun languages") with languages that employ clitics in the relevant context…
Descriptors: Language Research, Contrastive Linguistics, Form Classes (Languages), Morphology (Languages)
Poverty-of-the-Stimulus and SLA Epistemology: Considering L2 Knowledge of Aspectual Phrasal Semantics
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Rothman, Jason; Iverson, Michael – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2008
Coupling a review of previous studies on the acquisition of grammatical aspects undertaken from contrasting paradigmatic views of second language acquisition (SLA) with new experimental data from L2 Portuguese, the present study contributes to this specific literature as well as general debates in L2 epistemology. We tested 31 adult English…
Descriptors: Morphology (Languages), Semantics, Syntax, Second Language Learning