A grafia de sílabas complexas na aquisição da escrita: relações entre fonologia e ortografia

Abstract

This research aimed to describe and analyze the spelling of both complex onset and rime in texts of children in writing acquisition phase, establishing relationships with the phonological acquisition of these structures and with the phonological theory, in order to understand the motivation of (ortho)graphic errors that children produce in complex syllabic structures. Data extracted from 280 spontaneous texts produced by children from the first cycle of elementary school (1st to 5th grades) of a public school in the city of Pelotas/RS/Brazil were analyzed, quantitatively and qualitatively. The texts were collected in 2014 and 2015, and are part of the Written Language Acquisition Text Database (BATALE). With regards to the syllabic structures focused on the study, the following were considered: in complex onset, consonant groups formed by lateral and rotic, in the CCV and CCVC frames; in complex rime, the lateral, nasal, fricative and rotic segments in medial position in the word, in the VC, CVC and CCVC frames. The effect of the independent variables (i) type of syllabic structure, (ii) type of segment, (iii) type of (ortho)graphic error, and (iv) school grade was tested on the frequency of occurrence of the (ortho)graphic errors found in the texts. In relation to (i), it was found that (ortho)graphic errors are significantly more frequent in complex rimes than in complex onset; in relation to (ii), it was found that the (ortho)graphic errors are influenced by the type of segment present in the complex rime, with the spelling of the lateral and nasal consonants concentrating significantly more errors than the spelling of the fricative and rotic consonants; in relation to (iii), it was found, for the complex rime, that in the 1st period of the 1st cycle of elementary school (1st to 3rd grades), errors of phonological nature are significantly more frequent than errors of orthographic nature; in the 2nd period of the 1st cycle of elementary school (4th and 5th grades), errors of orthographic nature are significantly more frequent than errors of phonological nature. It was also verified that the omission is the most frequent type of phonological error in both the syllabic structures analyzed, and, in the complex rime, the substitution is also significant, although secondary in relation to the omission; in relation to (iv), finally, it was found that the frequency of (ortho)graphic errors in complex onset presents significant differences between the 1st grade and the 3rd grade of elementary school. From these results, it is possible to conclude that the spelling errors in complex syllables produced by children in the writing acquisition phase can present three types of motivation that are not mutually exclusive: (i) the incomplete explicitation of the relationship between the syllabic constituents complex onset and rime and the phonemic layer of the language; (ii) in the cases of nasal and lateral spelling in complex rhyme only, the conflict between children's phonology and the orthographic system’s phonology, the latter being equivalent to the phonology of literate adults, which provide different statutes for structures with nasal and lateral; (iii) in the cases of nasal and fricative spelling in complex rime only, the knowledge related to contextual and arbitrary orthographic rules.