Mother-tongue Education, Linguistic Variation and Language Processing

Abstract This paper explores an intersection between three main topics: (i) sociolinguistic variation, (ii) variation acquisition and processing according to a psycholinguistic approach and (iii) mother-tongue teaching/learning when the two previous factors are taken into account. Nonstandard linguistic varieties coexist in society with a standardized variety that could be defined as the ‘language of education’. The distance between standard forms and the variety acquired by children at home is quite variable and could have an impact on how and when the formal register becomes (or not) part of the range of linguistic speaker’s options. In order to address these issues, we provide experimental results regarding the comprehension and production of two linguistic aspects that show a high variation in Brazilian Portuguese- verbal agreement and anaphoric forms in direct object position - as a function of formal education exposure; we also articulate these results with the concepts of core grammar and marked periphery (Kato, 2005) for a more theoretical discussion.