A PALAVRA DIVERGENTE. PREVISIBILIDADE E IMPREVISIBILIDADE NAS INOVAÇÕES LEXICAIS DA FALA DE DUAS CRIANÇAS

Abstract

Lexical coinages encountered in the speech of two children learning Brazilian Portuguese were examined and found to reveal aspects of both predictability and non-predictability. Various divergent words observed reflect tendencies in word formation which stretch the limits of the possibilities of the language. Two distinct types of lexical coinages were observed. The first was that of nouns coined from verbs where the creations reveal the use of derivatives of verbs identifying actions or processes to designate the objects or effects of these actions. In such innovations, it is predictable that the word created will be marked with a nominal suffix (either -o or -a), but unpredictable which one will be used. The second type of coinage consists of unexpectedly reduced or abbreviated forms of the corresponding word in the adult lexicon, resulting in a deviant word of the same grammatical function. These equally unpredictable occurrences are explained by the hypothesis of divergent segmentation by the child, an operation which involves processes which may be semantically motivated morphological one and/or prosodic ones derived from the structural rhythm of the sentence. A consideration of phenomena which affect linguistic production on the word level leads to the conclusion that both phonological and morphological or lexical elements must be integrated to account for the innovations encountered in the production of a child learning its mother tongue.