Acquisition of adjectives in Brazilian Portuguese: an experimental study

Abstract

This work aims to present the analysis of data collected from an experiment carried out with children and adults on the acquisition of adjectives in Brazilian Portuguese. The study joins the Formal Semantics approach, especially Kennedy and McNally's (2005) Scalar Semantics, which assumes a subdivision in the class of adjectives between gradable and non-gradable. Also, Gradable adjectives are divided into relative and absolute. Based on these concepts, this research investigated how children acquire adjectives, especially with regard to the difference of relative and absolute items. For this, a psycholinguistic experiment with Portuguese speakers aged 3 to 5 years old was carried out, based on that of Syrett et al (2005) for the acquisition of English. The activity consisted of presenting a pair of objects and asking “Please, give me the X”, in which X was the tested adjective. The results point to the postulation of a semantic universal. This is because gradable adjectives, in the positive form, in Brazilian Portuguese, behave just like English adjectives, that is, they have the same nature and the same scalar structure. It is noticed that, regarding the relative adjectives tested (large and long), the participants analyzed the demand applying an implicit comparison logic, which was expected, since the inherent vagueness of these adjectives makes the comparison parameter to be sought in the context. The absolute adjectives tested (spoted and full), as in the experiment in English, present a lexically defined parameter and the appropriate use cases that present divergence with this parameter are considered cases of imprecision. The interpretation of this behavior is explained by pragmatics, since it uses language in its context of use and ruled by Cooperative Principles between speakers that seems to have guided the participants' decision-making.