Phonological characteristics of the syllable in orthographic transpositions in Portuguese children's writing

• Grant number: 24/09779-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: December 01, 2024
• End date: November 30, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Principal Investigator: Lourenço Chacon Jurado Filho
• Grantee: Mirian Verza Amarante
• Supervisor: Maria Joao dos Reis de Freitas
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências, Letras e Ciências Exatas (IBILCE). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de São José do Rio Preto. São José do Rio Preto , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
• Associated to the scholarship: 23/03671-5 - Comparison of metric foot characteristics in orthographic transpositions between Brazilian and Portuguese children's writings, BP.DR

Abstract

In the literature, it is possible to find an interest in investigating children's writing, especially when this analysis focuses on unconventional orthographic occurrences. Among the studies, there are also those that assume that those episodes are signs of difficulties or symptoms of a learning disorder. Differently from that view, I believe that the appearance of unconventional orthographic occurrences would be an effect of the functioning of the phonological characteristics of the language, so analyzing those manifestations would allow me to detect points of instability that the very functioning of the language would cause in children's writing. In search of observing that effect, I have been developing a doctoral research project in Brazil with the general objective of comparing phonological characteristics of the syllable in orthographic transpositions of the writing of Brazilian and Portuguese children. In order to improve my study, I propose a BEPE fellowship to review the analysis of the data and carry out specialized reading that I believe is necessary to achieve my objective and describe the possible explanations for the similarities and differences between the two language varieties. To that end, I propose to quantify and compare the presence of orthographic transpositions to detect their internal gradience as they occur in the single intersyllabic, double intersyllabic, single intrasyllabic, and double intrasyllabic forms. Subsequently, I propose to observe and compare the quality of the movements, analyzing: (1) from which position of the syllable the displaced graphemes depart and in which position of the syllable they arrive, observing whether that displacement would cause the maintenance, the increase or decrease of the syllabic complexity in the arriving syllable, compared to the departing syllable of the segments; and (2) from which syllable of the word the segments move (stressed syllables or non-stressed syllables). Thus, I hope to demonstrate how the functioning of language can explain the appearance of unconventional orthographic occurrences, especially transpositions, in the writing of the analyzed children.