The attribution of nominal gender in oral productions of late learners of Portuguese as a non-native language

• Autor(a) principal: Ferreira, Tãnia Santos
• Data de Publicação: 2024
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.34624/rual.v0i11.35746

Based on the analysis of gender assignment and nominal gender agreement deviations in oral productions, the present study aims to assess patterns of acquisition of the grammatical gender category in Portuguese as a non native language (PNNL) by late learners, native speakers of Spanish and English, attending classes at levels A2, B1 and B2. More specifically, we aim to investigate whether the configuration of prior linguistic knowledge affects learners’ performance with respect to the association of nominal gender values in Portuguese. The empirical work showed that a greater typological proximity of the languages, mother tongue and learning target language, does not translate into a reduced number of deviations, since, in proportional terms, the deviation rates in the two segments are very close, especially at the most advanced level. Finally, the oral productions of the Spanish informants also reveal a certain stabilization effect in learning, since at level B2 the proportion of deviations is not considerably lower than that recorded at the previous levels, A2 and B1.