Chapter 9
Linguistic and social embedding of variable concord with 1st plural nós ‘we’ in Brazilian Portuguese
In vernacular Brazilian Portuguese, use of 1st plural desinence -mos with nós ‘we’ is variable, although it is categorical in European Portuguese and very frequent in highly educated speakers in Brazil. Its absence is stigmatized in the urban context as an indication that the speaker ‘does not know how to speak Portuguese’. This phenomenon exhibits vigorous constraints and is subject to intricate structural conditioning based on tense and paradigmatic relationships, our main point. The most robust social effect is level of education. We analyze three samples and show that underlying this stigmatized morphosyntactic phenomenon there are effects on the functional level (tense distinctions), the cognitive level (marking of more easily perceptible forms), and the structural level (maintenance of phonological pattern).
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Methodological and theoretical aspects
- 3.Analysis and discussion
- 4.Final remarks
-
Acknowledgements
-
Notes
-
References
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Cited by (2)
Cited by 2 other publications
Pereira Scherre, Maria Marta, Lilian Coutinho Yacovenco & Anthony Julius Naro
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