Banca de DEFESA: KRICHYNAH LOUREN GANDARA DE LIMA FREITAS

Uma banca de DEFESA de MESTRADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : KRICHYNAH LOUREN GANDARA DE LIMA FREITAS
DATE: 10/07/2026
TIME: 14:00
LOCAL: Virtual
TITLE:

THE ACQUISITION OF NEGATIVE INVERSION BY BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE–ENGLISH BILINGUALS

KEY WORDS:

Interface Hypothesis. Negative Inversion. Bilinguals. Second Language Acquisition.

PAGES: 91
BIG AREA: Lingüística, Letras e Artes
AREA: Letras
SUMMARY:

This thesis investigated the acquisition of negative inversion in English by bilingual speakers of English (L2) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP) within the framework of the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace, 2011). Proposed and later revised by Sorace (2006, 2011), this theory within the field of Second Language Acquisition predicts that structures involving the syntax–discourse interface are susceptible to instability even among speakers at advanced levels of proficiency. Within this theoretical framework, such instability is attributed to the cognitive processing of these structures, their representation, or even to the influence of input or the L1 on L2 acquisition. Our research hypothesis was that bilingual speakers of Brazilian Portuguese as an L1 and highly proficient users of English as an L2 would exhibit instability in the acquisition of negative inversion. Sentences instantiating this structure, such as “Under no circumstances can you open the door tonight,” are characterized by subject–auxiliary inversion (“can you”) preceded and triggered by a negative adverb or negative adverbial phrase. It is precisely this dependency between a syntactic operation and the polarity value of the fronted negative adverb that places negative inversion at the syntax–discourse interface. To test our hypothesis, three experiments were conducted. The first two experiments established, together with native speakers, the set of target sentences to be used in the bilingual test, whereas the third tested the predictions of the Interface Hypothesis with this group. All participants completed an Acceptability Judgment Task in which they were asked to evaluate grammatical and ungrammatical examples of negative inversion structures on a 7-point Likert scale, as well as a final discourse question designed to assess explicit knowledge of the structure. In addition, the bilingual speakers completed an English vocabulary measure test (Updated Vocabulary Levels Test) for proficiency classification purposes. The structures tested in the first experiment were not well accepted by the native speaker group, whereas in the second experiment the new set of tested sentences produced the expected pattern. The third experiment then compared the results of Experiment 2 with those obtained from the bilingual speakers. The results support the Interface Hypothesis, since the bilingual speakers exhibited instability in the acquisition of negative inversion in English, even among those with higher levels of proficiency. However, there appears to be a relationship between explicit knowledge of the grammatical rule and the expected behavior toward the structure.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Presidente - CANDIDO SAMUEL FONSECA DE OLIVEIRA
Interno - RENATO CAIXETA DA SILVA
Externo à Instituição - RICARDO AUGUSTO DE SOUZA
Externo à Instituição - SHALALEH JAVADI