ABSTRACT
The research focusing on the expression of space in European Portuguese follows Talmy's work on the structuring of space in language. It is important to bear in mind that refer to language-specific factors taken into consideration is not a supranational linguistic system such as a Portuguese language, linguistic variety used in a given community, for example, European Portuguese or Brazilian Portuguese. The research set in the theoretical parameters referred to earlier, examines spatial reference in narratives produced by child and adult speakers of European Portuguese in a context the interlocutors lack mutual situational knowledge. The study of the representation of movement in language involves an analysis of nominal reference to determine the linguistic realizations of figure and ground. The story structure and reference to the protagonists, distinction between spatial anchoring and the spatial frame. At the linguistic level discourse analysis shows that European Portuguese should not be classified as the morphologically rich languages, predicted to be acquired by morpho-lexical cues.
