Resumen de Chunking and the reduction of the preposition "para" ‘to, for’ in Brazilian Portuguese
This article investigates the reduction and contraction of the preposition para ‘to, for’ in Brazilian Portuguese (para ~ pra). Although this is a widespread reduction, it does not affect each instance of para. Corpora analysis shows that the reduction is more frequent in certain expressions, such as paraela ‘to/for her’ (81%), paraminha ‘to my’ (77%), para frente ‘forward’ (75%), para casa ‘to home’ (74%). This paper offers evidence that this reduction can be explained due to the frequency of co-occurrence. The concepts of string frequency (cf. Krug 1998) and relative frequency (Torres Cacoullos 2006) are tested. The analysis suggests that speakers have multiple clouds of exemplars for the same word (or string of words) and that detailed information is stored along with individual words. It is also argued that whole words or frequently used expressions can be the units of lexical storage, and this is why frequency effects can build up and affect word production and language change.
