The Acquisition of English “–ed” Complex Codas by Brazilian Portuguese Speakers: a Reanalysis under a Connectionist Optimality Theory

This study aims to apply the proposal of a connectionist version of Optimality Theory (Bonilha, 2004) in order to analyze the data which were previously considered in Alves (2004), regarding the acquisition, by Brazilian Portuguese speakers, of English complex codas which characterize the English morpheme “-ed”. The analysis which was carried out in Alves (2004), developed through the standard model of Optimality Theory, reached the conclusion that the acquisition of a second language may imply not only the constraints reranking, but also the acquisition of a new underlying representation which is able to lead to output forms which are similar to those produced by native speakers. By considering the fact that, for a Connectionist OT, the phoneme does not exist as a mental representation, hence not constituting an underlying form, we intend to verify the adequacy of Connectionist Optimality Theory to revisit the analysis developed in Alves (2004).