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Publication . Matos, Gabriela

TP-ellipsis with polarity particles exhibits island effects not only in cases of long-distance movement of the remnant but also when the remnant does not cross any island, showing that some non-overt element moves from the elided TP. Also in non-island contexts, TP-ellipsis with non-local antecedents is sensitive to finiteness. Correlating these properties I will argue that the null-T, the head of the elided TP, moves, for scope reasons, to the topmost sentence that relates the elliptical site to the sentence containing its antecedent. The resulting T-chains, which must preserve the finiteness value of each link, constitute a requirement for the identification of the elliptical-TP.

2017Book part

Open access

Language contact and variation in Cape Verde and São Tome and Principe

Publication . Alexandre, Nélia; Gonçalves, Rita

Both Cape Verdean Portuguese (CVP) and Santomean Portuguese (STP) are in contact with Portuguese-related Creole languages formed during the 15th and 16th centuries: Capeverdean, in Cape Verde, and Santome, Angolar and Lung’Ie, in São Tomé and Príncipe. Despite this, Portuguese is the only official language of the two archipelagos. The goal of this chapter is twofold. First, we aim to compare and discuss corpora data from CVP and STP underlining the impact of socio-historical factors in some morphosyntactic aspects of these Portuguese varie-ties’ grammars. Second, we will show that the convergence and divergence observed is not only driven by the language contact situation but also by internal change mechanisms.

2018Book part

Open access

Quantas sílabas tem “cháv(e)na”? Sobre o impacto dos apagamentos vocálicos na segmentação silábica de crianças no ensino pré-escolar

Publication . Freitas, Maria João; Afonso, Catarina; Castelo, Adelina

No presente estudo, é discutida a natureza da informação linguística processada durante o desempenho de tarefas de consciência fonológica: (i) conhecimento fonológico, presente nas representações fonológicas armazenadas no léxico mental; (ii) informação fonética, disponível no sinal acústico dos estímulos fornecidos às crianças. Para tal, foi observado o comportamento de 23 crianças portuguesas (média etária: 5;04) a frequentar uma escola do Ensino Pré-escolar, no sentido de anular eventuais efeitos das representações ortográficas no desempenho da tarefa proposta. As crianças foram submetidas a uma prova de segmentação silábica de palavras, que incluía 19 estímulos distratores e 7 estímulos-alvo, apresentados com e sem apagamento de vogais átonas passíveis de serem suprimidas em contexto de fala espontânea. Os resultados mostraram não ser possível identificar apenas um tipo de processamento linguístico aquando da segmentação dos estímulos apresentados (acesso a representações fonológicas ou acesso a propriedades acústicas). Os resultados obtidos, nomeadamente os relativos a erros na segmentação dos estímulos presentes no instrumento, levaram-nos a colocar a hipótese da ativação de diferentes vias concorrentes no processamento de tarefas de consciência fonológica: acesso à representação fonológica; acesso à informação acústica; acesso a representações de diferentes formatos fonéticos possíveis para uma mesma entrada lexical.

2015Journal article

Open access

Um polvo é igual a um pato? Sobre o impacto das variáveis fonológicas na avaliação do conhecimento metalinguístico

Publication . Afonso, Catarina; Freitas, Maria João

Most tools used to assess phonological awareness (PA) are not controlled from a phonological perspective. However, research available for different languages refers the impact of phonological variables in the assessment of this type of linguistic knowledge. In this paper, we will be focused on the impact of the prosodic variables word length, syllable constituency and word stress in the performance of tasks assessing Portuguese children’s PA. A sample of 49 monolingual and typically developing Portuguese children was gathered (22 first graders and 27 third graders). Three tasks were used to assess syllable awareness (1 segmentation task, 1 identification task, 1 omission task); one segmentation task assessed the children’s segmental awareness; another segmentation task assessed their awareness of syllable constituency. Although some studies report the effect of all prosodic variables mentioned above (see state of the art below), the results in this paper show a significant effect of syllable structure, lexical stimuli with branching onsets and branching rhymes being the most problematic, but no significant effects of word length or word stress. The results are an empirical contribution for the discussion of the aspects that need to be taken in to account to build PA assessment tools and to plan intervention in clinical and in educational contexts.

2017Journal article

Open access

How chinese learners of L2 European Portuguese interpret null and overt pronouns in forward and backward anaphora

Publication . Zheng, Yi; Luegi, Paula; Madeira, Ana; Matos, Gabriela

In a questionnaire study we investigate how native speakers of European Portuguese (EP) and Chinese, as well as Chinese learners of EP as second language (L2), interpret null and overt pronouns in forward and backward anaphora. Results show that EP native speakers exhibit different interpretative biases for null and overt pronominal subjects in both forward and backward anaphora. Chinese native speakers show similar interpretation in backward anaphora in their L1 but a subject preference with both null and overt pronouns in forward anaphora conditions. Chinese learners of L2 EP present an overall preference to interpret both pronouns as referring to the subject referent, although there is a developmental effect towards the target interpretation in overt pronoun backward anaphora conditions. Results confirm previous studies in L2 EP (Madeira et al., 2012; Lobo et al., 2017), but add the possibility that this pattern may be explained by L1 influence.

2018Journal article

Open access