Aquisição segmental e prosódica nas produções verbais de crianças pré-termo

Abstract

When acquiring a language, the child begins to make adjustments to produce the target language (MIRANDA; MATZENAUER, 2010; MATZENAUER, 2015). This acquisition can be affected by gestational age and weight. This study started from the hypothesis that there are gaps between premature gaps regarding segmental and prosodic acquisition, correlating gestational age and birth weight. The objective of the present research was to analyze the segmental and prosodic acquisition in the verbal productions of premature babies, considering gestational age and birth weight. This study compared the number of consonant and vowel segments and the number of phonological processes among preterm infants over the six collections, taking as a reference the segmental and prosodic acquisition indicated by the literature on typical BP development. The spontaneous speech data of eleven children, evaluated between 12 and 25 months, comes from a longitudinal database collected between 2014 and 2018. The findings showed that the premature babies did not produce the plosive and nasal segments of the Portuguese language until the age of 20 months. The correction of age did not compensate for the existence of the delay present in premature infants. Prosodic acquisition proved to be outdated in terms of segmental filling of unstressed and stressed syllables, since the stressed syllable stood out in relation to unstressed syllables and the most relevant phonological processes were the non-realization of one syllable or more and the realization of a segment in simple onset. Premature infants are late because they do not fill the segments in all syllabic positions, which can affect linguistic performance at later ages.