Nome ou adjetivo? a identificação de elementos ambíguos no DP por falantes adultos do PB

Abstract

This work is concerned with the identification of elements of lexical categories N and ADJ, in Brazilian Portuguese (PB), on language processing. The working hypothesis assumed here is that the syntactic information is the first cue for the recognition of ambiguous elements’ categories used by subjects to map an element on a given class. We assume that the prosodic information does not affect the parsing, it happens after syntactic processing. The theoretical approach adopted here aims at reconciling a procedural account to language processing with a theory of language. Three experiments are presented with adult speakers of PB, two with self-paced reading and one with self-paced listening. The results provide support to the hypothesis and suggest that the syntactic information and the frequency are determinants on mapping an element on a given category.