The effect of input in the child production of Wh-questions in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

In Brazilian Portuguese (BrP), Wh-questions can be formed by moving the interrogative phrase (“What did the cat eat __?”) or keeping it in situ (“The cat ate what?”). The strategies seem, at first sight, optional and the Wh-in situ is reported as a productive strategy in BrP “paulistano” (dialect spoken in São Paulo) (LOPES-ROSSI, 1996; OUSHIRO, 2012). However, studies based on spontaneous data from children speaking BrP “paulistano” note that they almost never (or never) use this option (SIKANSI, 1999; GROLLA, 2000; GROLLA, 2009). As for the dialect spoken in Vitória da Conquista (BA), studied by Lessa-de-Oliveira (2003), the construction emerges rather early in children speech, being the most produced one in the input received by them. For the author, children follow the acquisition path of Wh-questions guided by the frequency found in the input. Aiming to explore the emergency of Wh-questions in child speech, comparing it to the input received by them, we studied a corpus of spontaneous speech of five children speaking BrP “paulistano”, between the ages 1;02.28 and 4;11.12. In our data, children preferred the moved-Wh, while adults opted more often for the Wh-que question. Furthermore, the Wh-in situ, being the least produced strategy by children was, overall, productive in adult speech. The results suggest that a high frequency in the input of a given construction does not, necessarily, amounts to a larger productivity in child speech.