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In:L1 Acquisition and L2 Learning: The view from Romance
Edited by Larisa Avram, Anca Sevcenco and Veronica Tomescu
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 65] 2021
► pp. 67–82

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Chapter 3
Cost-reducing strategies in the production of Brazilian Portuguese relative clauses

Language impairment in the syntactic domain

 | PUC-Rio
 | UERJ
Published online: 17 November 2021
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.65.03cor
Abstract
This paper investigates the production of relative clauses (RCs) by Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children/adolescents, focusing on cost-reducing RCs strategies that may circumvent syntactic language impairment. Different types of RCs are elicited from participants at risk of language impairment (LI) and an age-matched control group. The results support the differential demands of these structures. Group differences are restricted to moderate-severe LI participants on standard direct object (DO) RCs. The greater demands of indirect object/prepositional phrase (IO/PP) RCs in relation to DO RCs can be nevertheless noticed in the use of resumptive pronouns predominantly in IO/PP RCs. More truncated/inappropriate responses appear in the LI group. Although cost-reducing strategies can largely circumvent LI effects, the overall quality of responses can distinguish LI children.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Cost-reducing strategies in Brazilian Portuguese
  • 3.Eliciting the production of relative clauses
    • 3.1Method
      • 3.1.1Participants
      • 3.1.2Material and apparatus
      • 3.1.3Procedure
    • 3.2Results
    • 3.3Breakdown of responses
  • 4.Final remarks
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
References (30)
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