Intonational aspects on speech development of Brazilian Portuguese speaking children from the state of Minas Gerais

Abstract

In this paper, we analyzed the intonational speech pattern of three children, who were born in the city of Juiz de Fora, state of Minas Gerais, are native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and whose ages ranged from 5:9 to 6:8 years old. Thus, based on Frota et al. (2015), questionnaires, that simulated ordinary conversational situations, were administered to the children in order to investigate the prosodic contours – intonational pattern, prominence and rhythm – used by those three children and compare them with the intonational patterns of adult speakers of the same dialect, which are described in the Interactive Atlas of Romance Intonation (PRIETO et al., 2010-2014). Results of the present study indicate that children acquire the intonational patterns gradually, as they acquire the segments, words and syntactic structures of their native language.