Uma palavra é o nome de cada coisa: um estudo sobre as percepções de crianças do ciclo de alfabetização acerca da palavra oral e gráfica

Abstract

The perceptions of children while in a process of writing acquisition concerning what is a word, both in speaking terms as well as in writing terms, is the topic of the present study. In this thesis, oral and written segmentation data, produced by a group of six children in the literacy cycle are described and analyzed in order to foster a debate concerning relevant aspects for the constitution of the concept of word during the initial period of writing development. The analyzed data was taken from texts produced spontaneously from reading and writing activities, and then clinical interviews were carried out, with the intent of questioning the concept of word (cf. CARRAHER, 1989). The non conventional segmentation cases taken from texts produced spontaneously by subjects were interpreted in view of the theory of prosodic constituents (cf. NESPOR & VOGEL, 1986) and the analysis results showed a convergence with results previously found in literature, according to which children go under the influence of prosodic hierarchy, either using higher constituents, in the cases of hyposegmentation, or lower constituents, in the case of hypersegmentation. It has also been observed the influence of semantic aspects related to the lexicon and, at times, it was possible to observe the associated effect of information, a result of the introduction of children to literate practices (cf. ABAURRE, 1991; CHACON, 2007; CAPRISTANO, 2007; CUNHA, 2004). The analysis of re-elaborations observed at the moment the texts were written showed that the babbling made by the child while writing, produces a tone outline which may result in a non-conventional writing, which highlights complexity of the oral/written gaps (cf. ABAURRE, 1997). In the case of fluctuations(cf. CHACON, 2007), it has been noticed that the way a child returns to writing, after a pause, may be influenced by phonologic, semantic or orthographic criteria that, however, cannot be interpreted as a metalinguistic action. The material collected through clinical interviews showed that the child rejects structures constituted by one or two characters with the absence of accent marks and referring to as a word and that, even segmenting all the words in a conventional way that does not mean that the child is considering each structure as a word. This shows that the criteria change as there moments the child interprets the Word according to the number of letters and others as syllables. Thus, the results showed that the child’s path towards the conventional written word is not linear and it presents a multitude of senses. The concept of Word, besides being multiple, presents singularities referring to the way each child will, as time goes by, build this concept which can be conducted through distinct paths.