Subject-verb agreement in the spoken language in the historical route of the Bandeirantes

Author(s)

Deize Crespim Pereira

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2004-11-25

Examining board members

Angela Cecilia de Souza Rodrigues; Roberto Gomes Camacho; Marilza de Oliveira

• Advisor: Angela Cecilia de Souza Rodrigues

Abstract

This research presents a synchronic and quantitative study of the variation between application x non-application of the subject-verb agreement rule with the 3rd and 1st plural persons. The data were collected from Popular Portuguese spoken by elderly who live in the rural areas of São Paulo and Minas Gerais, in the regions that coincide with the historical route of the Bandeirantes (members of colonial exploratory expeditions). The variation of subject-verb agreement with the 3rd plural person is an ordinary phenomenon in Brazilian Portuguese, and it has been extensively documented by linguistic literature, which gives evidence that forms as Eles fala x Eles falam can be found in the speech of people of various Brazilian regions and of different education degrees. Few are the studies that deal with the variation of subject-verb agreement with the 1st plural person (Nós fala x Nós falamos), displayed in popular varieties of Brazilian Portuguese. Using the theories of Sociolinguistics and Functional Linguistics, our goal is to describe, analyze and explain the patterns of agreement found, searching for linguistic (semantic, grammatical, discursive) and social factors that condition the application or the non-application of the formal subject-verb agreement rule. (AU)