Brazilian people writing in Spanish: an analysis of the usage of the subject pronouns

• Grant number: 15/24403-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2016
• End date: December 31, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Applied Linguistics
• Principal Investigator: Rosa Yokota
• Grantee: Jéssica Rodrigues Rosa
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Brazilian Portuguese is a language that is known for and characterized by the usage of the full subject pronouns. Spanish, on the contrary, presents an asymmetry that is reversed in relation to Brazilian Portuguese, that is, according to González (2008), while in the linguistic evolution of Brazilian Portuguese there is a propensity to use a lot the subject pronoun and to use a little the object pronoun, in Spanish what happens is the opposite, given that in that language there is the obligatory filling of the clitic pronouns and the elision of the subject in a great part of the contexts. Thereby, in Spanish it is only recommended the usage of the subject pronouns on the following cases: 1) to avoid ambiguity; 2) to contrast subjects; 3) to avoid repetition of a verb; 4) to emphasize. Nevertheless, because of the similarities between the two languages, the comparison between them and the hypothesis that a Brazilian person would have great facility in learning Spanish, and consequently during the learning they would transfer many structures from their mother tongue to their target language are very common. Therefore, it is unexceptional hearing that a Brazilian apprentice that is learning Spanish has the tendency to use a lot of subject pronouns when trying to express themselves in Spanish, given that there exists an influence of their mother tongue. In view of the given hypotheses and the comparative studies, we intend to investigate how Brazilian students use the subject pronouns in productions written in Spanish, as well as test the hypothesis that there would be an overuse of the subject pronouns in the written productions of Brazilian students that study Spanish. In order to do this, we will analyze productions written with adult students in a course of Letras - Portuguese/Spanish.