The study delves into the influence of accent and segment completion of prosodic units in speech data from two children between the ages of 1;0.4 and 2;1.10 and who were exposed to Brazilian Portuguese spoken in the states of Alagoas and Pernambuco. It was hypothesized that grammatical processing stems from two concurrent movements in opposing directions during phonological acquisition: a centripetal movement triggering segmentation of the prominent syllable and an opposing, centrifugal one aimed at segment completion of prosodic units. These analytical movements imply a hierarchical basis of relationships between its constituent structures, an assumption backed by autosegmental phonology (GOLDSMITH, 1995; CLEMENTS; HUME, 1995; MOTA, 1996) and prosodic phonology (NESPOR; VOGEL, 1986; SCARPA, 1997, 1999a; SANTOS; SCARPA, 2005). The methodology consisted of a observational and descriptive follow-up with parental consent. The children s spontaneous speech while playfully interacting with parents was digitally recorded over a 7-month period. Data showed that identifying word stress favors the handling of phonological material in the stressed syllable under centrifugal action, thus leading to segment completion of both post-tonic and pre-tonic syllables in accordance with the metrical foot of the target word. A tendency towards completion of the syllable structure and distinction of segment classes was seen in the stressed and post-tonic syllables, influenced by the prevalence of words having a trochaic stress pattern. The organizational hierarchy of the language was shown to guide and drive these movements of centripetal-centrifugal analyses that occur at different phonological levels prosodic and segmental. / O estudo investiga a influência do acento e o preenchimento segmental de unidades prosódicas em dados de fala de duas crianças entre 1;0.4 e 2;1.10 de idade, expostas ao português brasileiro falado em Alagoas e Pernambuco. Partiu-se da hipótese de processamento gramatical mediante dois movimentos de direções opostas co-ocorrentes na aquisição fonológica: a centrípeta desencadeando a segmentação da sílaba proeminente e a oposta, centrífuga, destinada aos preenchimentos segmentais das unidades prosódicas. Nesses movimentos de análises está implícita a base hierárquica das relações entre as estruturas constituintes, pressuposto defendido nas fonologias autossegmental (GOLDSMITH, 1995; CLEMENTS; HUME, 1995; MOTA, 1996) e prosódica (NESPOR; VOGEL, 1986; SCARPA, 1997, 1999a; SANTOS; SCARPA, 2005). A metodologia consistiu do acompanhamento observacional e descritivo, com o consentimento, durante sete meses, de registros de fala espontânea das crianças, em interação lúdica com os pais, gravados em áudio digital. Os dados mostraram que a identificação do acento da palavra favorece a manipulação do material fonológico na sílaba tônica, sob ação centrífuga, influenciando o preenchimento segmental tanto de sílaba pós-tônica como de pré-tônica em conformidade com pé métrico da palavra-alvo. Observou-se, no entanto, a tendência para o preenchimento da estrutura silábica e a diferenciação de classes segmentais na sílaba tônica e na pós-tônica, sob influência do predomínio de palavras com o padrão de acento troqueu. Constata-se que a hierarquia organizacional da língua rege e impulsiona esses movimentos de análises centrípeto-centrífuga que operam em diferentes níveis fonológicos prosódico e segmental.

This study investigates the patterns in nonword repetition performance of children with a developmental language disorder and bilingual children. It has been shown by previous research that both children with developmental language disorder and bilingual children tend to perform poorly in nonword repetition tasks. As these tasks are one of the tools often used for diagnosing markers of DLD in young children, diagnosing bilinguals with DLD proves to be difficult, since both of the groups exhibit a poor performance. An analysis of the patterns found in NWR performance of bilingual children and children with DLD might shed more light onto the issue. The study focuses on analysing the performance in a widely used assessment task - The Children's Test of Nonword Repetition. Three samples of data were analysed. The first sample of data consisted of monolingual English-speaking children diagnosed with a developmental language disorder. The second sample of data consisted of Czech-English bilingual children from international schools in Prague who started acquiring English at the time of birth, i.e. simultaneous bilinguals. The third and final sample consisted of Czech- English bilingual children from international schools in Prague who started acquiring English after one year of age, i.e. sequential bilinguals....