A marcação prosódica da posição do adjetivo no DP na fala dirigida à criança

Abstract

This study analyzes the prosody of the infant-directed speech to the Brazilian children. We investigated the presence of distinctive intonational features for the grammatical categories of name and adjectives that could highlight the position of the adjective in the complex DP. In Brazilian Portuguese, the position of the adjective is not rigid, and it can be placed, in several cases, before and after the name. Therefore, the acquisition of the adjectives could be a more complex task for the Brazilian children. The hypothesis of the Phonological Bootstrapping argues that phonological properties of the sentences could offer a set of reliable cues that could bootstrap the process of language acquisition. Recent studies indicate that the changes in the order of names and adjectives in a complex DP alter the prosody of those elements. Taking for granted that the infant-directed speech is altered on the prosodic level, we propose a prosodic analysis of the infant-directed speech to the Brazilian children in order to characterize the determinant phrase in regard to the position of the adjective: before and after the name.