Frequency effects in language acquisition: a case study of plural forms in Brazilian Portuguese

This paper discusses the acquisition of plural forms of words that end in a back glide in Brazilian Portuguese and may take two plural forms: either –s (the regular suffix) or the suffix –is. Fourty children were presented to picture cards containing words ending in a back glide and were asked to identify what they saw. Children’s answers presented the suffix –is for the vast majority of words rather than the regular plural suffix –s. Our results indicate that children abstract schemas rather than acquire default rules. The –is suffix has a very high frequency rate for words that end in a back glide which yields to the establishment of robust schemas. We argue that the plural suffix –is is adopted by children due to frequency effects which foments a very robust schema and enhances productivity. Key-words: acquisition; plural, language use, frequency, schemas Morphological storage and language acquisition The study of the acquisition of regular and irregular inflection is an important issue in the debate as to how morphology is represented in the speaker’s grammar/mind. More specifically, this debate addresses how children cope with the competing regular and irregular morphemes during the acquisition process. However, this last issue is interpreted according to the representational model adopted. This paper intends to be a contribution to such a debate by evaluating the acquisition of plural morphemes in Brazilian Portuguese. In relation to representational models or models of morphological storage, two major trends can be identified: the dual and the single models. The differences between these models reflect different conceptions of how the speakers’ grammars are organized. In the dual-processing model regular and irregular inflections differ structurally in terms of storage and processing (Marcus et. al., 1992, Prasada and Pinker, 1993, among others). Regular inflections are derived from a symbolic default rule while irregular inflected words are stored in the lexicon. Thus there is a structural difference between the storage and processing of regular and irregular morphological patterns. In single-mechanism models, storage and processing of morphological forms are related to a single associative mechanism and regular or irregular forms are treated in the same way as separate entries stored in the lexicon. ITRW on Experimental Linguisriucs (ExLing 2008)