SUBJECT EXPRESSION IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE: CONSTRUCTION AND FREQUENCY EFFECTS
type: CreativeWork
description: Brazilian Portuguese (henceforth BP) has for long been considered as a Null-subject language due to its variability in regards to subject expression (e.g. Era bom porque eu diminu\xeda de peso... era muito gordinha \u2018That was good because then I could lose some weight\u2026 (I) was a bit chubby. C33:179). Such variability has been attributed to the language's once rich inflectional system, and the reported increase in rate of subject expression has been seen as a result of changes to the system (Barbosa, Duarte, & Kato, 2005; Monteiro, 1994b; Negr\xe3o & Viotti, 2000). Moreover, there is agreement among several scholars that the variability can still be accounted for in terms of traditional factors such as emphasis, clarity, and ambiguity of the Tense, Aspect, and Mood (TAM) system. In this work, I demonstrate that, rather than an effect of such pragmatic factors as these, subject expression in BP is to a large degree an artifact of the frequency of use of certain constructions of different degrees of fixedness. The analysis proposed here falls under the framework of usage-based linguistics in which grammar is believed to be shaped by discourse as speakers produce it online (Bybee, 2006). Thus, any linguistic pattern observed in speech is emergent and a result of repetition (Bybee, 2006; Hopper, 1998). Therefore, it is believed that the patterns of subject expression found in the data are a result of the speaker's experiences with those patterns. The data used for the study are drawn from the corpus of oral Portuguese as spoken by educated speakers from Fortaleza (PORCUFORT) (Monteiro, 1994a). The analysis is based on 8066 tokens of 1sg, 2sg, and animate 3sg subjects culled from three different registers (Conversations, Interviews, and Lectures) across three different age groups (22-35, 36-50, and over 51). These tokens are subjected to a number of multivariate analyses to identify the contexts that significantly contribute to the realization of pronominal subje…
abstract: Brazilian Portuguese (henceforth BP) has for long been considered as a Null-subject language due to its variability in regards to subject expression (e.g. Era bom porque eu diminu\xeda de peso... era muito gordinha \u2018That was good because then I could lose some weight\u2026 (I) was a bit chubby. C33:179). Such variability has been attributed to the language's once rich inflectional system, and the reported increase in rate of subject expression has been seen as a result of changes to the system (Barbosa, Duarte, & Kato, 2005; Monteiro, 1994b; Negr\xe3o & Viotti, 2000). Moreover, there is agreement among several scholars that the variability can still be accounted for in terms of traditional factors such as emphasis, clarity, and ambiguity of the Tense, Aspect, and Mood (TAM) system. In this work, I demonstrate that, rather than an effect of such pragmatic factors as these, subject expression in BP is to a large degree an artifact of the frequency of use of certain constructions of different degrees of fixedness. The analysis proposed here falls under the framework of usage-based linguistics in which grammar is believed to be shaped by discourse as speakers produce it online (Bybee, 2006). Thus, any linguistic pattern observed in speech is emergent and a result of repetition (Bybee, 2006; Hopper, 1998). Therefore, it is believed that the patterns of subject expression found in the data are a result of the speaker's experiences with those patterns. The data used for the study are drawn from the corpus of oral Portuguese as spoken by educated speakers from Fortaleza (PORCUFORT) (Monteiro, 1994a). The analysis is based on 8066 tokens of 1sg, 2sg, and animate 3sg subjects culled from three different registers (Conversations, Interviews, and Lectures) across three different age groups (22-35, 36-50, and over 51). These tokens are subjected to a number of multivariate analyses to identify the contexts that significantly contribute to the realization of pronominal subje…
author: Silveira, Agripino
language: English
keywords: "Contructions, Frequency, Brazilian Portuguese, Subject Expression, Grammaticalization, Language Change"
date published: 2012-05-01T07:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T05:25:53Z
provider: University of New Mexico
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of New Mexico