Compreensão de estruturas de tópico-comentário e pronomes resumptivos na aquisição: avaliando os complementos diretos e indiretos

Abstract

This dissertation aims at contributing to the study of the comprehension of left-dislocated structures and resumptive pronouns by children acquiring BP. It aims at verifying whether the use of null or overt pronouns, resuming the left-dislocated element, may facilitate the comprehension of the sentences. The framework assumed is the Generative Theory (CHOMSKY, 1995), and a psycholinguistic experimental methodology is adopted. More specifically, it focuses on the comprehension of left-dislocated sentences with direct or indirect transitive verbs with children from 2 to 5 years of age in a series of Picture Selection tasks. It aims at verifying whether the stages for the acquisition of left-dislocated sentences and resumptive pronouns proposed by Grolla (2000) based on the production of a child acquiring BP can be attested in comprehension tasks. Moreover, it aims at verifying if the overt pronoun imposes additional difficulties for the comprehension of left-dislocated sentences by older children, as verified by Miranda (2008) for relative structures, also related to the left periphery of the sentence. Additionally, the data collected with older children, from 4 to 5 years of age, allows addressing the issue of dialectal variation, which seems to be related to the use of overt or null pronouns in BP, as pointed out in the literature (DUARTE, 1983; ORSINI; VASCO, 2007). Our results are compatible to those obtained for production, suggesting that the theoretical proposal put forth by Grolla (2000) is in the right track. The use of a movement strategy seems to be employed by 2;0 to 3;4 years-old children, who obtain a significant higher number of correct responses for sentences with direct transitive verbs and no overt pronouns. They show no preferences in relation to sentences with indirect transitive verbs, suggesting that a last resort strategy is at use in order to accommodate the presence of overt pronouns with indirect complements (HORNSTEIN, 2001). Older children, from 3;5 years old, stop showing a preference for direct objects without overt pronouns, which seems to indicate that the movement strategy has been abandoned in favor of a left-dislocated structure with resumptive pronouns. As far as indirect complements are concerned, there is significant difference between overt or null pronouns, favoring the former, which is taken as a reflex of possible dialectal preferences in BP, for this age group. Therefore, from this age level, it seems that children achieve a greater mastery of the investigated structures, getting closer to the adult behavior observed in comprehension tests. As far as the additional difficulty imposed by overt pronouns, our data doesn t seem to corroborate the findings in Miranda (2008). The comparison between public and private school show that older children make a distinction possibly related to dialectal differences: children from the private school show preference for the presence of overt pronouns in indirect complements, while children from the public school do not show this distinction