Scalar implicatures in the acquisition of Brazilian Portuguese
an optimality-theoretic analysis for the connective “or”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22409/gragoata.v29i64.60581Keywords:
language acquisition, scalar implicatures, optimality theory, bidirectional optimality theory, pragmaticsAbstract
When “or” is used in a sentence, there are, in principle, two readings: either “A or B, but not both” (exclusive) or “A or B, and possibly both” (inclusive). Language acquisition research has noted an asymmetry in children's linguistic behavior. Preschoolers, unlike adults, accept “or” in contexts where “and” would be more appropriate (TIEU et al., 2017; SKORDOS et al., 2020), while English-acquiring children produce “or-exclusive” before age four (MORRIS, 2008; EITELJÖRGE, POUSCOULOUS, and LIEVEN, 2018). This study argues that Optimality Theory (OT) can explain this asymmetry in child language, where production precedes comprehension. Focusing on Brazilian Portuguese (BrP), we investigated children's use of “or”. Two child speech corpora were analyzed: one with 119 hours of spontaneous recordings of four children aged 2;0 to 5;6, and another with 51 hours of recordings involving seven children aged 4;3 to 9;0. The results support findings in English, with the first “or-exclusive” production at 2;4 years. An OT-based analysis, extending Mognon et al. (2021) for “some” to “ou”, is proposed. Unidirectional optimization seems to fail to select a single harmonic output, necessitating bidirectional optimization for implicature calculation. This study suggests that bidirectional optimization develops later in children, explaining the observed asymmetry between production and comprehension.
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