Second langue acquisition process... Né? (ain’t)

Abstract

In this paper, I characterize usages of the discourse marker “né?” (ain’t) in phases of acquisition of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) as a Second Language (L2). Based on the Interactive-Textual Grammar (JUBRAN; KOCH, 2006), I compare uses of “né?” in spoken BP and PBL2. The data comes from spontaneous interactions with five Japanese-Brazilian children born on a farm known as Yuba Community. While in BP né? occurs only in end position of the speech shift or communicative unit, with basically interactional function, in PBL2, it occurs in start, medial or end positions, with basically topic sequencer function in the data from less proficient children, and basically interactional function in the data from the most proficient children. The general conclusion is that discourse marker is an important interactional resource in the joint construction of L2.