Aquisição da factividade: complementação infinitiva e extração-QU no português brasileiro

Abstract

In the realm of linguistic theory, the phenomenon of factivity is, in a broad sense, related to the property some lexical items or predicates exhibit of introducing an implicit or explicit presupposition. In the verbal domain, Kiparsky and Kiparsky (1971) assume that factive verbs carry the presupposition that the complement clause they may subcategorize expresses a true proposition. From the acquisition point of view, there is no clear consensus about the age of mastery of the properties of factive sentences. Hopmann & Maratsos (1977) conclude that factive sentences are mastered around age 6. For Abbeduto & Rosenberg (1985), children age 4 have already achieved it. Schulz (2002; 2003) argues for a stepwise acquisition pattern, suggesting stages children pass through up to 7 years old. Léger (2007) adds to Schulz s yet another stage in order to account for some semifactive verbs, for which the right distinction wouldn t be in place before 11 years old. At last, Scoville & Gordon (1979) suggest that only 14 year olds would be able to fully master factivity. This variety of results corroborate the idea of a stepwise acquisition pattern, let alone the different aspects involved in the phenomenon of factivity: the identification of a class of verbs allowing a factive reading, its presuppositional character, interlinguistic variation concerning possible subcategorization frames and a specific behavior as far as extraction in complex sentences is considered. This study aims at contributing for the investigation of the acquisition of factivity in Portuguese, focusing specifically on two underexplored aspects: the possibility of some factive predicates allowing non-finite complements in this language and the extraction patterns in factive complex sentences. The results obtained are discussed in the light of linguistic analyses, which couch on distinct syntactic features assigned to the factive predicates, (KIPARSKY E KIPARSKY, 1971; MELVOLD, 1991; SCHULZ, 2003; AUGUSTO, 2003; LIMA, 2007), with logical/semantic outcomes (LEROUX E SCHULZ, 1999; SCHULZ, 2002; 2003)