Category exchanges between names and verbs in the acquisition of the writing of Brazilian Portuguese by deaf

Abstract

In this scientific article, we discuss the linguistic phenomenon of the categorical exchange between names and verbs, whose occurrence was identified during the process of acquisition of interlanguage Portuguese-Libras. Our main objectives are to describe and analyze, based on the data of our corpus and in the light of Generative Grammar, how the late acquisition of the name and verb categories in the Brazilian Portuguese (BP) writing by the deaf has been occurring, having as a specific research object the phenomenon of categorial exchange. The initial hypotheses of this research were based on Kato (2005). We assume the hypothesis of the indirect access to UG in the acquisition of second language and hypothesize that the deaf perform the categorial exchange for two reasons: because they are guided by syntactic aspects of BP, ignoring morphological aspects of the name and verb categories, and because they transfer to writing of BP the same categorical indistinction typical of their L1 – Libras. This study had 11 subjects-informants, all deaf users of Libras as L1. The methodology of data collection was based on the production of written text and life experience reports recorded on video. For the transcription of the Libras data was used the SEL system.