Variation under a Psycholinguistic Perspective: Number Agreement in Brazilian Portuguese and the Impact of Schooling

Jakubów, Ana Paula S. P.; Corrêa, Letícia M. Sicuro

doi:10.5007/2175-8026.2019v72n3p101

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Articles • Ilha Desterro 72 (3) • Sep-Dec 2019 • https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2019v72n3p101 copy

Variation under a Psycholinguistic Perspective: Number Agreement in Brazilian Portuguese and the Impact of Schooling

Authorship SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Abstract

This paper¹ 1 This paper is the result of the doctoral research carried out by the first author (doctoral scholarship CNPq 2014 - 2018), under the supervision of the second author at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), in the development of the research program of the Language Acquisition and Psycholinguistics Lab (LAPAL-PUC-Rio), supported by FAPERJ E-24/202.959/2017 and CNPq 309499/2016. discusses the impact of schooling in the production of number agreement in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) by 6^th graders in Rio de Janeiro. Number agreement in BP can vary between: (a) redundant, the standard variety, or (b) non-redundant, non-standard forms. Such variation is influenced by speakers’ socioeconomic status (SES) and educational level. Results of an elicited production experiment carried out with 6^th graders suggest influence of SES/ type of school and academic performance in language production; the effects of schooling and metalinguistic awareness are discussed. An account of language production is presented, which combines L1 and L2 models of speech production, considering the possibility of the coexistence of varieties in a single speaker to be akin to bilingualism.

Key-words:
Linguistic Variation; Number Agreement; Psycholinguistics; Sociolinguistics; Schooling

Conditions	Examples of Stimuli
1. DP red	O-scachorro-sencontr-aramo leão
TP red	ART.DEF.MASC-PL dog. MASC-PL find-3.PST.PL the lion
	‘The dogs found the lion’
2. DP red	O-scachorro-sencontr-ou o leão
TP n-red	ART.DEF.MASC-PL dog. MASC-PL find-3.PST.SG the lion
	‘The dogs found the lion’
3. DP n-red	O-s cachorro-ø encontr-aramo leão
TP red	ART.DEF.MASC-PL dog. MASC-SG found-3.PST.PL the lion
	‘The dogs found the lion’
4. DP n-red	O-s cachorro-ø encontr-ou o leão
TP n-red	ART.DEF.MASC-PL dog. MASC-SG found-3.PST.SG the lion
	‘The dogs found the lion’

Speakers’	Pre-syntactic (before	Specification of features	Post-syntactic
ability to map contextual and linguistic information	grammatical encoding)

	message generation	morphophonological features	(after grammatical encoding)
	(possible choice of variety)	corresponding to varieties	morphophonological encoding
Non-proficient	-	± redundant	-s or -Ø
		(underspecified)
Proficient	Standard	+ redundant	-s
		(specified)
	non - standard	± redundant	-s or -Ø
		(underspecified)

Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão, Bloco B- 405, CEP: 88040-900, Florianópolis, SC, Brasil, Tel.: (48) 37219455 / (48) 3721-9819 - Florianópolis - SC - Brazil
E-mail: ilha@cce.ufsc.br

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[1] anapaulaspj@gmail.com

Type of school	n	girls	boys	Age range	Mean age
Priv	25	14	11	10;11 - 12;11	11;1
Pub	52	29	23	11;1 - 14;6	12;6

Academic Performance	n	girls	boys	Age range	Mean age
Pub A	25	17	8	11;3 - 14;6	12
Pub B	27	12	15	11;1 - 14;5	12;6

Social Group	Morphological Awareness
Priv (25)	84
Pub A (25)	72
Pub B (27)	29

	Types of responses
	DP red			DP red			DP n-red			DP n-red			Singular			No D			Ungrammatical			Total valid responses
	TP red			TP n-red			TP red			TP n-red
Type of School/ Academic Performance	Priv	Pub A	Pub B	Priv	Pub A	Pub B	Priv	Pub A	Pub B	Priv	Pub A	Pub B	Priv	Pub A	Pub B	Priv	Pub A	Pub B	Priv	Pub A	Pub B
Condition
1	27	23	32	0	1	1	0	2	10	0	0	1	0	3	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	308
2	27	20	7	5	10	1	1	2	5	1	2	10	2	4	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	308
3	31	24	15	0	0	0	4	17	1	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	4	2	308
4	28	16	5	0	6	8	2	3	3	2	15	1	2	5	3	0	0	0	0	0	1	308