ACQUISITION OF PREPOSITIONAL CATEGORY OF WRITTEN PORTUGUESE BY DEAF

Abstract

ABSTRACT
We investigate in this paper the acquisition by deaf of the prepositional category of written Portuguese, considering the Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) in the spoken modality as the first language (L1) of deaf and the Portuguese as their second language (L2). We conduct our research from three hypotheses: (1) we assume Kato's (2005) hypothesis, according to whom the writing acquisition process is a process of second order, similar to the process of acquiring a second language; (2) with base on the idea that the input for the language acquisition is characterized by its ability to function as a trigger that starts the process of parametric marking due to the robustness factor based on frequency and salience of the data in the input (LIGHTFOOT, 1991), we formulate the hypothesis that the functional features are the salient features in the acquisition of the preposition category of the Portuguese by deaf and the genitive Case is more relevant feature in this process; and (3)we assume the hypothesis of Lessa-de-Oliveira (2009), according to whom, in the acquisition of oral language in written modality by deaf, who had no access to the spoken modality of this language, these individuals use the spoken modality of sign language that acquired as a path to access the UG. For the data analysis and discussion of the investigated facts, we support our study theoretically in the Generative Grammar and in the innatist proposal, studies by Chomsky (1965, 1970, 1981, 1995) and other generative studies. The corpus of this research is composed of written production samples by the deaf, as well as natural speech in Libras, collected through nine deaf informants, young people and adults students of elementary school, high school and graduation. For the transcription of Libras data, we use the Writing System for Sign Language - SEL, developed by Lessa-de-Oliveira (2012). The analysis of data of the writing interlanguage produced by deaf informants of the search took us to results that show that these informants, regardless of education level, still have great difficulty in acknowledging the positions where the prepositions should occur, although we can say that the acquisition process of the Portuguese preposition category occurred or it is in progress, to some degree, for most informants. In quantitative and qualitative analysis we came to results that show that the functional positions genitive construction (GC) and oblique nominal complement (ONC) proved to be the most conducive to the occurrence of a prepositional phrase (PP) on data from interlanguage; and that reasonable productivity of PPs in GCs and ONCs in the data is due in large part to the preposition 'de' which by far is the one that finds more positions that fit it and the one that has more number of converged occurrences. Seeking to understand the data from the perspective of robustness in the input, we conclude that the deaf have begun to internalize the parametric value that defines that GCs and ONCs are PPs in Portuguese, due the robustness of PPs in GCs and ONCs found in the input.And knowing that the preposition in GC and ONC occurs as agent of assignment of Case, we can say that the functional feature of Case is salient for the process of acquisition of the prepositional category, highlighting the genitive and oblique Cases in nominal complements. Regarding the investigation of the grammatical parameters presence of Libras and Portuguese in the interlanguage, we observed that the interlanguage of the deaf investigated in this research presents to be strongly permeated by aspects of Libras, mostly syntactic, and aspects of the Portuguese, mostly lexical.