A matéria publicada neste periódico é licenciada sob forma de uma Licença Creative Commons -Atribuição 4.0 Internacional. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ A natureza do custo computacional na compreensão de passivas: um estudo experimental com adultos 1,2 Abstract: This paper reports the results of a self-paced reading task experiment with passive sentences, conducted with Brazilian Portuguese (BP) speaking adults. The processing cost of verbal and adjectival passives is investigated. Additionally, the processing cost of agentive and non-agentive PPs is contrasted in verbal passives. Inanimate subject DPs were used in irreversible sentences. The aim of this paper is to verify the extent to which processing cost can be dissociated from factors such as animacy and reversibility, which are suggestive of the strategic attribution of the agent-role to the subject DP. The results indicate that verbal passives are more costly than the adjectival ones, and that non-agentive PPs are particularly costly. A procedural characterization of the computation of these structures is suggested, in the light of the sketch of a minimalist based on-line model of syntactic computation. linguística, particularmente no contexto gerativista. Uma das questões mais controversas diz respeito à existência e à natureza do custo que passivas impõem ao processamento (FERREIRA, 2003). O presente trabalho visa a investigar, portanto, a existência e a natureza desse aparente custo de processamento na compreensão de passivas verbais em sentenças cujo sujeito é um constituinte nominal (doravante, DP) inanimado (por exemplo, o copo foi quebrado) em contraste com sentenças passivas adjetivais (por exemplo, o copo está quebrado).

This study focuses on the production of passives by children (3–4 and 5–6 years old) under favorable conditions. An experiment is reported in which passives were elicited by priming in a Snap Game, where a central character was the patient of the events depicted in the cards to be described by the children. All children produced at least one passive and their overall number exceeded passives in prior studies; reversed roles were negligible. In a subsequent image description task, passives were elicited in less favorable conditions. Syntactic priming prevailed across tasks. A procedural account of the production of passives and of the effect of priming is provided, which supports the argument for children’s early competence to compute verbal passives.

This paper investigates the discrimination of passive predicates by children acquiring Brazilian Portuguese. A truth-value judgment experiment is reported here which assesses 3–4- and 5–6-year-olds’ ability to discriminate eventive/stative and eventive/resultative predicates. The results show an adult-like performance as far as stative and resultative predicates are concerned. As for eventive predicates, children’s performance has not reached the adult-standard, though they do discriminate eventive from stative/resultative predicates. These results are discussed in relation to previous ones with children acquiring European Portuguese and Catalan (Estrela, 2013; Gavarró & Parramon, 2017). A developmental account is provided which aims at reconciling the present and previous results.

Tis paper focuses the distinction between verbal and adjectival passive sentences. For that differentiation to be accounted for, a previous proposal considering a specifc functional node for eventive passives - passiveP (LIMA JÚNIOR; AUGUSTO, 2015) is retrieved. It is arguably assumed that the approach based on passiveP, besides maintaining a uniform analysis to active and passive sentences (as VoiceP in Collins (2005)), deals well with intervention issues, and is prosperous in addressing parametric variation and language acquisition facts. As far as the tripartite distinction among the different types of passives is concerned (EMBICK, 2004; DUARTE; OLIVEIRA, 2010), it is proposed that a main bipartite distinction between eventive and adjectival passives may be retained, which is here attributed to the presence of passiveP. Concerning stative and resultative passives, an agreement operation between the auxiliary verbs and the participle (LUNGUINHO, 2011) is assumed to allow for different readings to be obtained. A fourth group of passive-like sentences, involving participles, which have lost their connection with their original verbs, is also syntactically distinguished and treated as actual copular constructions.