Acquisition of Language and how the Experiencer understands psychological verbs

Dr. Ana Paula Martins- Universidade Federal Rural da Amazônia

We start from the assumption that, among a set of lexical items available for acquisition, the psycho-verbs are complex to the acquisition of language, considering its inherent characteristics, such as designating a state, a condition or a situation. To do this, we

developed an experimental study, using the eye tracking technique and we had the participation of 72 children, aged between 3 and 8 years old, divided into three age groups.

The experimental task aimed to examine the comprehension of the thematic role of Experiencer in the syntactic positions of subject and object of psycho-verbs (FEAR, FRIGHTEN), according to Cançado's (1995) proposal. Participants undertook an auditory comprehension task of 20 experimental sentences (eg, Maria loves the mother/A Maria ama a mãe). Then the children were invited to choose the character that corresponded to the answer of the questions that focused on the subject or on the object of the sentences (Who loves? / Who is loved?). During the task, participants' ocular movements were recorded. The results suggest that the alternation of the syntactic position of the thematic role of Experiencer is relevant to the understanding of psycho-verbs, since ANOVA showed the independent variables thematic role of the subject and the thematic role of object as relevant for the behavior of the dependent variable reaction time. The results indicated that, in the three age groups, the most causative aspect present in the thematic role of the external argument makes the comprehension of the Experiencer in the syntactical object position less accessible.