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Part of
Studies on Variation in Portuguese
Edited by Pilar P. Barbosa, Maria da Conceição de Paiva and Celeste Rodrigues
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 14] 2017
► pp. 219–232

Chapter 9
Linguistic and social embedding of variable concord with 1st plural nós ‘we’ in Brazilian Portuguese

| Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
| Federal University of Espírito Santo Vitoria, BrazilUniversity of Brasília, Brazil
| Departement of Education of State of Espírito Santo, Brazil
| Departement of Education of State of Espírito Santo, Brazil

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).

Keywords: Brazilian Portuguese, variable concord, 1st plural nós ‘we’, linguistic embedding
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodological and theoretical aspects
  • 3.Analysis and discussion
  • 4.Final remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.14.09nar
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