Emergência e aquisição do /r/ em coda em dois municípios do Rio Grande do Sul

Abstract

Purpose: to verify the differences related to the emergence, acquisition and intervening variables during the learning of the archiphoneme /R/ in coda, from two Rio Grande do Sul cities, in Brazil. Methods: speech data were collected from 60 children from Santa Maria and 52 children from Sobradinho. The ages were between 2:6 and 5:0 and between 3:2 and 5:4, respectively. The intervening variables considered were: age, sex, tonicity, grammatical class, preceding and following syllable context, number of syllables, and word and syllable position. The statistical program VARBRUL was used for the analysis, with level of significance of 5%. Results: The variable age influenced the acquisition of the archiphoneme /R/ in coda, in both cities. In medial as in final position, the studied segment emerges and is acquired first in Santa Maria, while in Sobradinho the emergence and acquisition of the segment happen later. When analyzing the coda stabilization in general, the significant variables in Santa Maria were word position and sex. The final coda is favorable for the /R/ production, as well as the female sex. In Sobradinho, tonicity and word length influenced the acquisition of /R/ in coda. The stressed syllables and two and three syllable words were favorable for the correct production. Conclusion: In each city, it was possible to observe differences related to emergence and acquisition ages, as to the intervening variables which influenced the acquisition of the archiphoneme /R/, according to the dialectal variant used in each city.