BACKGROUND: studies about Brazilian Portuguese number morpheme acquisition and its productive usage have indicated controversial results. AIM: to verify the comprehension and production of singular and plural markers in children within normal language development. METHOD: participants were 64 children ranging in age from 3:0 to 6:11 years. In the comprehension test, children were encouraged to point to the correctly inflected noun picture, among three foils. In the production test, they had to name each picture with the correctly inflected article and noun. RESULTS: there was an increase of correct answers with age. The production of the plural form received the lower scores, but presented a significant enhancement from 3:0 to 5:0 years. CONCLUSION: this ability improved with development and was considered productive after 5:0.
Child Language; Language Development; Language Tests
