Cover not available
Part of
Spanish Language and Sociolinguistic Analysis
Edited by Sandro Sessarego and Fernando Tejedo-Herrero
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 8] 2016
► pp. 285–304

Spanish and Portuguese parallels

Impoverished number agreement as a vernacular feature of two rural dialects

ORCID logo | University of Texas at Austin
| Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco
This paper investigates variable number agreement phenomena across the Determiner Phrase (DP) of two non-standard varieties of Spanish and Portuguese spoken in Latin America: Afro-Bolivian Spanish (ABS) and Popular Brazilian Portuguese (PBP). In line with recent studies in the field of minimalist syntax (Adger & Smith, 2005; Sessarego, 2014), this article combines sociolinguistic techniques of data collection with generative models of analysis to obtain more fine-grained, empirically testable generalizations. The presence of an impoverished agreement system in these two varieties is studied in light of recent linguistic proposals on the nature of default values (Harley & Ritter, 2002). These findings are generalized to other grammatical constructions, which systematically occur across a number of vernacular dialects.
Keywords: Afro-Bolivian Spanish, determiner phrase, number agreement, Popular Brazilian Portuguese, rural dialects
Published online: 25 May 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.8.12ses
References (84)
References
Adger, D. (2006). Combinatorial variability. Journal of Linguistics, 42, 503-530. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Adger, D., & Smith, J. (2005). Variation and the minimalist program. In L. Cornips & K.P. Corringan (Eds.), Syntax and variation: Reconciling the biological and the social, (pp.149-197). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baptista, M. (2003). The syntax of Cape Verdean creole. The Sotavento varieties. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barbosa, P., Kato, M.A., & Duarte, M.E. (2005). Null subjects in European and Brazilian Portuguese. Journal of Portuguese Linguistics, 4, 11-52. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baxter, A.,Lucchesi D., Guimarães, M & . (1997). Gender agreement as a ‘decreolizing’ feature of an Afro-Brazilian dialect. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 12(1), 1-57. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bezerra, C. (2004). Tejucupapo: História - teatro - cinema. Recife, PE: Edições Bagaço.Google Scholar
Braga, M., & Scherre, M. (1976). A concordância de número no SN na área urbana do Rio de Janeiro. In Encontro nacional de lingüistica (pp. 464- 477). Rio de Janeiro: Pontifícia Universidade Católica.Google Scholar
Braga, M. (1977). A concordância de número no sintagma nominal no triângulo mineiro (Unpublished MA thesis). Pontifícia Universidade Católica, Departamento de Letras e Artes, Rio de Janeiro, RJ.Google Scholar
Chambers, J. (2001). Vernacular universals. In T.M. Turell (Ed.), Proceedings of ICLaVE, the first International Conference on Language Variation in Europe. Barcelona: Universitate Pompeu Fabra.Google Scholar
. (2003). Sociolinguistic theory: Linguistic variation and its social significance. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
. (1986). Knowledge of language: Its nature, origins, and use. New York, NY: Praeger.Google Scholar
. (2000). Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In R. Martin, D. Michaels & J. Uriagereka (Eds.), Step by step: Essays on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik (pp. 89-156). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cornips, L., & Poletto, C. (2005). On standardizing syntactic elicitation techniques (Part 1). Lingua, 115(7), 939-957. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cowper, E. (2005). The geometry of interpretable features: Infl in English and Spanish. Language, 81, 10-46. Retrieved from: <
CrossRef DOI logo with hyperlink to permanent DOI
> DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Delicado-Cantero M., & Sessarego, S. (2011). Variation and syntax in number expression in Afro-Bolivian Spanish. In L. Ortiz-López (Ed.), Proceedings of the 13th Hispanic Linguistic Symposium (pp. 42-53). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Frampton, J., & Gutmann, S. (2000). Agreement is feature sharing. Retrieved from: <[URL]>
Freire, M.A. (2000). Associação Heroínas de Tejucupapo (Monography). Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco, Recife, PE.Google Scholar
Ferreira, L., & Holt, D.E. (2014). On the partially divergent phonology of Spanish, Portuguese and points in between. In P. Amaral & A.C. Carvalho (Eds.), Portuguese- Spanish Interfaces: Diachrony, synchrony and contact (pp. 123-150). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ferreira, L., & Sessarego, S. (in press). Age and Grammatical architecture explaining nominal agreement variation in Recife: Reconciling the Formal and the Social. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics.
Greenberg, J.H. (1963). Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. In J.H. Greenberg (Ed.), Universals of Language, (pp. 73-113). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Gutiérrez-Rexach, J., & Sessarego, S. (2014). Morphosyntactic variation in three Afro-Andean dialects: The evolution of gender agreement in DP. Lingua, 151(Part B), 142-161. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Guy, G. (1981a). Linguistic variation in Brazilian Portuguese: Aspects of phonology, syntax and language history (Unpublished PhD dissertation). University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.Google Scholar
. (1981b). Variability in American dialects of Spanish and Portuguese. In D. Sankoff & H.J. Cedergren (Eds.), Variation omnibus (pp. 85-93). Edmonton: Linguistic Research.Google Scholar
. (2004). Muitas Linguas. The linguistic impact of Africans in colonial Brazil. In J.C. Curto & P.E. Lovejoy (Eds.), Enslaving connections: Changing cultures of Africa and Brazil during the era of slavery (pp. 125-137). New York, NY: Humanity Books.Google Scholar
Harley, H., & Ritter, E. (2002). Person and number in pronouns: A feature-geometric analysis. Language, 78, 482-526. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Henry, A. (2005). Ideolectal variation and syntax theory. In L. Cornips & K. Corrigan (Eds.), Syntax and variation: Reconciling the biological and the social (pp.109-122). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Herschensohn, J. (2000). The second time around: Minimalism and L2 acquisition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kiparsky, P. (1972). Explanation in phonology. In P. Stanley (Ed.), Goals of linguistic theory (pp. 189-227). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1972). Language in the inner city. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Lipski, J. (2005). A history of Afro-Hispanic language: Five centuries and five continents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2006a). Morphosyntactic implications in Afro-Hispanic language: New data on creole pathways. Paper presented at The 35th New Ways of Analyzing Variation Conference (NWAV35) , Columbus, OH, October, 2006.
. (2006b). Afro-Bolivian Spanish and Helvécia Portuguese: Semi-creole parallels. Papia, 16, 96-116.Google Scholar
. (2008). Afro-Bolivian Spanish. Madrid: Iberoamericana.Google Scholar
Ma, R., & Herasimchuk, E. (1968). The linguistic dimensions of a bilingual neighborhood. In J.A. Fishman et al. (Eds.), Bilingualism in the barrio (pp. 111-119). New York, NY: Yeshiva University.Google Scholar
McCarthy, C. (2008). Morphological variability in the comprehension of agreement: An argument for representation over computation. Second Language Research, 24(4), 459-486. Retrieved from:<
CrossRef DOI logo with hyperlink to permanent DOI
> DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Müller, A. (2002). The semantics of generic quantification in Brazilian Portuguese. Probus, 14(2), 279-298. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Naro, A., & Scherre, M. (1996). Disfluencies in the analysis of speech data. Language Variation and Change, 8, 1-12. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2007). As origens do Português Brasileiro. São Paulo: Parábola.Google Scholar
Naro, A. (1981). The social and structural dimensions of a syntactic language change. Language, 57, 63-98. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Perl, M., & Schwegler, A. (Eds.). (1998). América negra: Panorámica actual de los estudios lingüísticos sobre variedades hispanas, portuguesas y criollas. Madrid: Iberoamericana.Google Scholar
Pereira, E. (2008). Luzia Maria da Silva: Breve Relato da história da peça teatral batalha das heroínas de Tejucupapo. Goaina, PE: Faculdade de Formação de Professores de Goiana.Google Scholar
Pesetsky, D., & Torrego, E. (2007). The syntax of valuation and the interpretability of features. In S. Karimi, V. Samiian, & W.K. Wilkins (Eds.), Phrasal and clausal architecture: Syntactic derivation and interpretation (pp. 262-294). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pires, A., & Rothman, J. (Eds.). (2009). Minimalist inquiries into child and adult language acquisition. Case studies across Portuguese. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Plag, I. (2008a). Creoles as interlanguages: Inflectional morphology. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 23(1), 114-132. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2008b). Creoles as interlanguages: Syntactic structures. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 23(2), 307-328. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pollard, C., & Sag, I. (1994). Head-driven phrase structure grammar. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Poplack, S. (1979). Function and process in a variable phonology (Unpublished PhD dissertation). University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.Google Scholar
. (1980). The notion of the plural in Puerto Rican Spanish: Competing contrasts on (s) deletion. In W. Labov, (Ed.) Locating language in time and space (pp. 55-67). New York, NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Preminger, O. (2011). Agreement as a fallible operation (Unpublished PhD dissertation). MIT, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Rubio, C. (2010). Regularidades no fenômeno da concordância verbal em variedades do português brasileiro: Estudo sociolinguístico comparativo. Estudos linguísticos, 39(2), 602-616.Google Scholar
Rubio, R., & Pine, J. (1998). Subject-verb agreement in Brazilian Portuguese: What low error rates hide. Journal of Child Language, 25, 35-59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sankoff, D., & Laberge, S. (1978). The linguistic market and the statistical explanation of variability. In D. Sankoff, (Ed.), Linguistic variation: Models and methods (pp. 239-250). New York, NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Sankoff, D., Tagliamonte, S., & Smith, E. (2005). Goldvarb X: A variable rule application for Macintosh and Windows. Retrieved from: <[URL]>Google Scholar
Scherre, M. (1978). A regra de concordância de número no sintagma nominal em português (Unpublished MA thesis). Pontifícia Universidade Católica (Departamento de Letras e Artes), Rio de Janeiro, RJ.Google Scholar
. (1981). Variation de la regle d’accord du nombre dans le syntagme nominal en Portugais. In D. Sankoff & H.J. Cedergren (Eds.), Variation omnibus (pp. 125-133). Edmonton: Linguistic Research.Google Scholar
. (1988). Reanálise da concordância nominal em português (Unpublished PhD dissertation). Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.Google Scholar
. (1998a). Variação da concordância nominal no português do Brasil: Influência das variáveis posição, classe gramatical e marcas precedentes. In S. Grobe & K. Zimmermann (Eds.), “Substandard” e mundança no português do Brasil (pp. 153-188). Frankfurt: Teo Ferrer de Mesquita.Google Scholar
. (1998b). Paralelismo lingüístico. Estudos da Linguagem, 7, 29-59.Google Scholar
. (2001). Phrase-level parallelism effect on noun phrase number agreement. Language Variation and Change, 13, 91-107. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scherre, M., & Naro, A. (1991). Marking in discourse: Birds of a feather. Language Variation and Change, 3, 23-32. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (1992). The serial effect on internal and external variables. Language Variation and Change, 4, 1-13. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (1998). Sobre a concordância de número no português falado do Brasil, In G. Rufino (Eds.), Dialettologia, geolinguistica, sociolinguistica. Atti del XXI Congresso Internazionale di Linguistica e Filologia Romanza, Centro di Studi Filogici e Linguistici Sicilliani. Universitá di Palermo (pp. 509-523). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Schwegler, A. (2010). State of the discipline. Pidgin and creole studies: Their interface with Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 3(2), 431-481. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sessarego, S. (2011a). On the status of Afro-Bolivian Spanish features: Decreolization or vernacular universals? In J. Michnowicz (Ed.), Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics (pp. 125-141). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla.Google Scholar
. (2011b). Introducción al idioma afroboliviano: Una conversación con el awicho Manuel Barra. Cochabamba/La Paz: Plural Editores.Google Scholar
. (2012). Vowel weakening in Yungueño Spanish: Linguistic and social considerations. PAPIA: Revista Brasileira de Estudos Crioulos e Similares, 22(2), 279-294.Google Scholar
. (2013a). Enhancing dialogue between quantitative sociolinguistics and minimalist syntax. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 5(2), 79-97.Google Scholar
. (2013b). Afro-Hispanic contact varieties as conventionalized advanced second languages. IBERIA, 5(1), 96-122.Google Scholar
. (2013c). Chota Valley Spanish. Madrid: Iberoamericana.Google Scholar
. (2014). The Afro-Bolivian Spanish determiner phrase: A microparametric account. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State Press.Google Scholar
Sessarego, S., & Ferreira, L. (2014). Reconciling the biological and the social: Morphosyntactic variation in two Romance languages. Paper presented at the Ohio State University Congress on Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics (OSU CHiLL). Ohio State University , Columbus, Ohio (USA), April 2014.
Sessarego, S., & Gutiérrez-Rexach, J. (2011). A minimalist approach to gender agreement in the Afro-Bolivian DP: Variation and the specification of uninterpretable features. In G. De Vogelaer & M. Janse (Eds.), The diachronic of gender marking. Special issue of Folia Linguistica, 45(2), 465-488.Google Scholar
. (2012). Variation universals and contact induced change: Language evolution across generations and domains. In M. González Rivera & S. Sessarego (Eds.), Current formal aspects of Spanish syntax & semantics (pp. 251-270). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
Silva, G. (2001). Word order in Brazilian Portuguese. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Simioni, L. (2007) A concordância de número no DP: Propostas minimalistas. Estudos Linguísticos, 26, 117-125.Google Scholar
Slabakova, R. (2009). What is easy and what is hard to acquire in a second language? In M. Bowles, T. Ionin, S. Montrul, & A. Tremblay (Eds.), Proceedings of the 10th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (pp. 280-294). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Sorace, A. (2004). Native language attrition and developmental instability at the syntax-discourse interface: Data, interpretations and methods. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7, 143-145. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, S. (2006). Analyzing sociolinguistic variation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Terrell, T. (1975a). Functional constraints on deletion of word-final /s/ in Cuban Spanish. Proceedings of the First Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (pp. 431-437). Berkeley, CA: University of California.
. (1975b). La interacción de la aspiración y la elisión sobre la /s/ implosiva y final en el español de Puerto Rico. Ms, University of California, Irvine.Google Scholar
Vasconcellos Lopes, R. (2006). Bare nouns and DP number agreement in the acquisition of Brazilian Portuguese. In N. Sagarra & A.J. Toribio (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 9th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (pp. 252-262). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Weinreich, U., William L., & Herzog, M. (1968). Empirical foundations for a theory of language change. In W. Lehmann & Y. Malkiel (Eds.), Directions for historical linguistics (pp. 95-198). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Cited by (6)

Cited by six other publications

Romero, Rey & Sandro Sessarego
2018. Chapter 3. Hard come, easy go. In Language Variation and Contact-Induced Change [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 340], ► pp. 63 ff. DOI logo
Sessarego, Sandro
2016. A response to Perez. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 31:1 ► pp. 200 ff. DOI logo
Sessarego, Sandro
2017. Chocó Spanish and the Missing Spanish Creole debate. Language Ecology 1:2 ► pp. 213 ff. DOI logo
Sessarego, Sandro
2019. Language Contact and the Making of an Afro-Hispanic Vernacular, DOI logo
Sessarego, Sandro
2020. Not all grammatical features are robustly transmitted during the emergence of creoles. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 7:1 DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2015. Afro-Peruvian Spanish [Creole Language Library, 51], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.