The role of frequency in first-person plural variation in brazilian Portuguese: "Nós" vs. "a gente"
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Catherine Travis [1] ; Agripino Silveira [1]
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[1] University of New Mexico
University of New Mexico
Estados Unidos
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- Localización: Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics, ISSN-e 2199-3386, ISSN 1939-0238, Vol. 2, Nº. 2, 2009, págs. 347-376
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
This paper investigates the conditioning of the variation between two first-person plural forms in contemporary spoken Brazilian Portuguese, an older pronoun nós used with first-person plural agreement and a newer pronoun a gente, derived from an NP meaning ‘the people’, used with third-person singular agreement. This is part of a broader change in the language involving the breakdown of verbal agreement as third-person marking extends to the domains of first- and second-person. We consider the conditioning of use of these forms in spoken Brazilian Portuguese from Fortaleza and uncover a phenomenon that as yet has not been noted in relation to this variation, namely frequency. We find that the high type frequency of a gentecontributes to the spreading use of this form, and the high token frequency of nós in specific constructions slows it down. We predict that these highly frequent constructions (such as nos temos ‘we have’, digamos ‘let’s say’ and vamos + V-INF‘let’s V’) may remain a last vestige of nós in Brazilian Portuguese as a gente comes to take over the realm of first-person plural.
