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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1237

Part of Session 163: Variation and change in the city of Rio de Janeiro (Other abstracts in this session)

Arbitrary subjects in Brazilian Portuguese: contrasting the varieties of Rio de Janeiro and Salvador

Authors: de Oliveira Cavalcante, Silvia Regina
Submitted by: de Oliveira Cavalcante, Silvia Regina (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

Changes undergone by Brazilian Portuguese pronominal system have led to a preference for visible pronominal definite and arbitrary subjects, as shown by some empirical researches (Duarte 1995, 2000). There is also, on the other side, a decrease in the use of pronominal clitics, among them the clitic "se", used with third person singular verbs to mark indefinite reference. Such a decrease resulted in the preference for visible nominative pronominal subjects with arbitrary reference, such as a gente (we) and você (you). However, the system also allows third person null subjects with arbitrary reference (Galves, 1987), contrary to what happens in European Portuguese, as shown in examples (1a) and (1b):
(1) a. Nos dias de hoje não usa mais saia. (Galves, 2001, p.46)
Nowadays, pro doesn’t wear skirts anymore.
b.Aqui conserta sapatos. (Galves, 2001, p. 110)
Here, pro fixes shoes.
In this paper, I present an analysis of the representation of third person null arbitrary subjects in a study of the change in “short term real time” (Labov 1994), based on two samples of spoken language produced by highly educated speakers (Nurc/RJ), in order to find the favoring contexts of such a kind of null arbitrary subject. Both linguistic (main verb; tense; modal verbs) and non-linguistic factors (year of the interview, age of the informant) have been controlled. The results show that there is an increase in the frequency of null arbitrary subjects in the speech of younger people in the most recent sample. As for the linguistic factors, the generic and habitual sentences, marked with present and imperfect tense and the presence of modal verbs, favor the null arbitrary subject.