Comparison between the acquisition of /k/ and /g/ and of the phonetic sequences [kw] and [gw] in Brazilian Portuguese - intervening variables and phonological status

PURPOSE: to analyze and to compare the acquisition of the phonetic sequences [kw] and [gw] and of the plosives /k/ and /g/ by children with typical speech development, considering the intervening linguistic and extralinguistic variables.METHODS: the amount of analyzed words was 3193, after 213 interviews with children who present typical phonological development. The Phonological Assessment of Child was used and all words which contain the phonetic sequences [kw] e [gw] and the phonemes /k/ e /g/ were selected. The analyzed dependent variables were: correct and incorrect production of the referred phonemes. The intervening variables were: sex, age, tonicity, number of syllables in the word, preceding syllabic context, following syllabic context, position in the word, sonority and segment complexity. The statistical program VARBRUL was used with significance level of 5%.RESULTS:the selected variables for the correct production of [kw] e [gw] were age and position in the word. To the production of /k/ and /g/, the variables were sex, age, preceding syllabic context, following syllabic context and sonority. In the analysis of all words which were the corpus of this research, the statistic program selected the complexity of the segment as relevant in the acquisition of the analyzed segments. The highest probability of correct production was found for the phonemes /k/ and /g/.CONCLUSION: the fact that different variables are significant for the acquisition of /k,g/ and of [kw, gw] showed a reason for different children’s phonological therapy organization, regarding the mentioned sounds. It seems that the sequences [kw] and [gw] may be considered as complex segments of Brazilian Portuguese, because the complexity of the segment was selected as statistically significant in the studied corpus.