Recalling the CCV’s branching onsets acquisition: stages of syllabic development

Abstract

This article aims to debate about the development stages in the course of acquisition of CCV branching onset syllables (Consonant1 + Consonant2 + Vowel) – structure present in Brazilian Portuguese words like ‘bruxa’ witch, ‘blusa’ blouse, ‘prato’ plate, ‘placa’ plaque. Reviewing researches on Brazilian Portuguese as Teixeira (1988), Lamprecht (1993), Ávila (2000), Ribas (2002), Staudt (2008), Baesso (2009), this article examines possible motivations for the (non)observation of linguistic development stages in the CCV acquisition by Brazilian children. It is investigated whether such motivations may lie i) a general trend of the phonological acquisition path – as observed in the acquisition of other syllabic structures, like CVC coda; (ii) in the individual development of the subjects; or iii) in methodological effects related to the type of data collection. To verify these motivations, the study analyzes naturalistic data of 3 subjects, recorded biweekly, and experimental data of 49 subjects, recorded in a repetition test of words and pseudowords. The results indicate that the naturalistic data collection can affect the observation of syllabic development stages, since the unbalance of CCV targets and their phonotatic combination may affect the determination of strategies such as lexical selection and the origin/direction of substitutions in CCV. Individual development was observed as correlated with the general phonological tendencies pointed out by Teixeira (1988) and Lamprecht (1993), because these generalizations may act as limits to the different paths possible to the child in CCV acquisition. The study also suggests that the type of strategy used to repair CCV also depends on the child’s syllabic development.

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12957/matraga.2017.28574