The Impact of Schooling on the Acquisition of Function Words in Brazilian Portuguese

Principal investigators: 

• Silvina Montrul (University of Illinois)
• Elaine Grolla (USP)
• Tania Ionin (University of Illinois)

Funding: Lemann Institute

Brazilian Portuguese has been undergoing linguistic changes and exhibits morphosyntactic variation between spoken and written registers. Our study proposes to examine the linguistic knowledge of adult native Brazilian speakers and the impact of literacy on language development.

Through a series of short language tests with speakers of different ages (and varying levels of literacy), our study investigates the acquisition of function words—clitic objects (me, te, o, a), articles (o, a), and pronouns (ele, ela). These words, which are critical for sentence and discourse comprehension and processing, are acquired early (in preschool) but are not fully mastered in discourse until after adolescence. We will investigate the impact of literacy on syntactic knowledge as well as on the referential properties of pronouns, clitics, and articles in oral comprehension, as well as oral and written production.

Participants include 82 Brazilian school-aged children (between 5 and 17 years old) and 72 Brazilian adults (between 30 and 60 years old) with varying levels of schooling (ranging from low to high levels of education). Our results will offer theoretical contributions regarding the role of literacy in native language acquisition and may provide suggestions for interventions to reduce illiteracy rates, diminish inequality, and improve the academic performance, economic standing, and overall well-being of the Brazilian population.