The Acquisition of Portuguese as a Second Language

The Acquisition of Portuguese as a Second Language: A Research Overview presents an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of the empirical research on the acquisition of Portuguese as a second language.

Covering both European and Brazilian Portuguese, this volume explores the core questions in the field and how they relate to different theoretical and methodological issues. Cardoso and Rato address these questions in the context of different linguistic domains, such phonetics-phonology, syntax, morphosyntax, and semantics, also considering their intersection by exploring the acquisition of interface phenomena. With discussion questions complementing each chapter, the authors encourage readers to think critically and compare, relate, and contextualise existing research in practice. This volume also includes a reflection on additional contexts in which Portuguese is acquired. In a world characterised by multilingualism, research on the acquisition of Portuguese as a third language and as a heritage language provides findings that lead to a better understanding of the acquisition of Portuguese in different settings.

This book will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in second language acquisition, Portuguese linguistics, and, more broadly, Romance linguistics, as well as to teachers.