Subject-verb agreement in Brazilian Portuguese: What low error rates hide

Abstract

This study focuses on the acquisition of subject-verb agreement in Brazilian Portuguese. A quantitative analysis of the data produced by a Brazilian child between the ages of 3;02.07 and 3;04.08 is presented. The overall error rate is low. However, a further and more detailed analysis reveals important contrasts both in the frequency of production of different verb inflections (as regards the person/number variables within the verb morphological system) and in the rate of subject-verb agreement errors associated with them. Our findings not only suggest that subject-verb agreement may be acquired piecemeal, but also that the learning of particular verb inflections may itself be a gradual process. Alternatives to the idea of rule-governed production - such as the child's reproducing frozen subject-verb strings previously produced by adults and blending different frozen strings into novel combinations -are discussed as processes which can shed some light on the pattern of both erroneous and correct production shown by this child.