The acquisition of the contrastive proform 'ele mesmo' in Brazilian Portuguese

• Grant number: 11/14819-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: March 01, 2012
• End date: February 28, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Psycholinguistics
• Principal Investigator: Elaine Bicudo Grolla
• Grantee: Renato Caruso Vieira
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Our work intents to investigate the process of acquisition of the proform 'ele mesmo' in BP, understanding that when performing an anaphoric function in a clause with a predicate of unexpected reflexivity, the complex form 'ele mesmo' plays an emphatic, contrastive or focalizing role, unlike what happens with the simplex form 'ele'. We defend, therefore, that the usage of the co-indexation marks in enunciations that posses the proform under analysis, with respect to the antecedent recovered by it, must be understood as regulated by semantic-pragmatic rules - which, as we know, are acquired later by the native speakers of natural languages - rather than by the syntactic Principles like the ones which were previewed by the Chomsky's Binding Theory. Our proposal is to continue the study initiated by Grolla (no prelo), focusing our attention on the marked aspect of 'ele mesmo' - unlike the non-marked 'ele' - in the clauses in which there's a reflexivity considered surprising, deepening the investigations about the subject which, always concerned to provide new discoveries to the language acquisition area, will also embrace other areas in linguistics, such as syntax, semantics and pragmatic, duo to the polemic grammatical nature of the linguistics components to be investigated. Moreover, new experimental researches will be applied, with a different methodology from that used by Grolla, in order to get new and more abundant data which will base our conclusions that can confirm those of Grolla or propose reformulations to them. (AU)

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

VIEIRA, Renato Caruso. Acquisition of the proform \ele mesmo\ in Brazilian Portuguese. 2014. Master's Dissertation - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) São Paulo.