Variation and linguistic change and preservation of information

Authors

  • Deize Crespim Pereira

Keywords:

Functional Linguistics, preservation of information, Popular Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to consider the influence of the linguistic factor informational status on two phenomena under linguistic variation and change in Popular Brazilian Portuguese: (i) explicitness x omission of reflexive pronouns, and (ii) application x non-application of the subject-verb agreement rule with the 1st plural person. The data under study consist of interviews from the project Português Popular em São Paulo (Popular Portuguese spoken in São Paulo) and the project Filologia Bandeirante (“Bandeirante” Philology). The theoretical and methodological tools are those from Functional Linguistics and Labovian Variationist Sociolinguistics. The results of data’s quantitative analysis show a tendency to preserve referential information in contexts in which it conveys new information. Thus, the subject-verb inflectional agreement as well as the reflexive pronouns tend to be explicit when their absence results in loss of information.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Published

2016-04-04

How to Cite

Pereira, D. C. (2016). Variation and linguistic change and preservation of information. Estudos Linguísticos (São Paulo. 1978), 42(1), 100–111. Retrieved from https://revistas.gel.org.br/estudos-linguisticos/article/view/1089

Issue

Section

Gramática Funcional