Aquisiçao das consoantes róticas no português brasileiro e no espanhol: um estudo comparativo

This Doctoral Dissertation describes the L1 acquisition of rhotic consonants in Portuguese and Spanish, in all syllable positions that may be occupied by these segments in both languages, that is, word-initial and wordmedial single onsets (strong-r), single and complex onsets and word-medial and final codas (weak-r). The data, which belong to the AQUIFONO and CHILDES databases, were produced by normally developed monolingual children, ranging from 2:0 to 4:2 years old. Given the fact that the current literature has not yet reached a definite conclusion concerning the phonological status of rhotics, this study aims to discuss the production of the two ‘r’ sounds by focusing on the repair strategies employed by children. Besides, it also aims to determine the linguistic variables and the extralinguistic variable that play a role in acquisition. For the data analysis, we have employed the theories on Syllable and Stress. The data were submitted to analytical treatment under the VARBRUL software package.