Um estudo sociolinguístico da concordância verbal de número em Belo Horizonte

Abstract

Abstract: This thesis investigates the factors that influence the realization of verbal number agreement in the 1st and 3rd person plural forms in spoken Portuguese from Belo Horizonte, based on spontaneous speech data extracted from the C-Oral-Brazil corpus. The research is based on the theoretical and methodological assumptions of Variationist Sociolinguistics (HERZOG; LABOV; WEINREICH, 2006 [1968]; LABOV, 2008 [1972]; LABOV, 2006 [1966]; TARALLO, 1986), which conceives linguistic variation as a systematic and socially conditioned phenomenon. The study dialogues with investigations on verbal agreement in brazilian portuguese (SCHERRE, 1998; 2007; SCHERRE & NARO, 2007; SCHERRE; NARO, and CARDOSO, 2007; OUSHIRO, 2015) and takes as a comparative reference the data from Nicolau (1984) that adresses the absence of the concordance mark in the variety from Belo Horizonte and Faria (2008) that outlines an overview of verbal agreement in the capital of Minas Gerais. The main objective of this study is to analyze factors that influence the realization of verbal number agreement in the forms referring to the 1st and 3rd person plural in spoken Portuguese from Belo Horizonte. The specific objectives are: (i) to analyze the spontaneous speech data collected in Belo Horizonte, from the C-Oral-Brazil corpus, considering the theoretical and methodological assumptions of Variationist Sociolinguistics; (ii) to investigate the linguistic and social factors that influence the variation in the expression of verbal number agreement, focusing on the 1st and 3rd person plural forms; (iii) to examine the role of the pronoun "Vocês" as a conditioning element of the realization or omission of the plural mark in the Belo Horizonte variety; (iv) to verify the predominance of the standard or non-standard norm in the performance of verbal number agreement, based on the effective uses observed in the C-Oral-Brazil corpus. The central hypothesis is that in the Portuguese spoken in Belo Horizonte, the variation in the number agreement in the 1st and 3rd person plural forms reveals a tension between the effective patterns of use and the grammatical norm, with the pronoun "Vocês" being a catalyst for this divergence. We also believe that this variation is conditioned by linguistic and social factors, and that the school acts as a regulatory agent, curbing the expansion of non-standard variants among speakers with higher education, which contributes to the maintenance of the standard norm as a reference of linguistic prestige. Quantitative analysis, guided by Quantitative Sociolinguistics (GUY; ZILLES, 2007), was carried out with the aid of the GoldVarb X 3.0b3 program (SANKOFF; TAGLIAMONTE and SMITH, 2005), an easy-to-interface and useful tool for the analysis of linguistic variation and widely used in sociolinguistic research. The qualitative discussion of the results is based on the Socio-educational perspective (BAGNO, 2012; BORTONI-RICARDO, 2008) that recognizes the school as a space for reflection on the use of language and the teacher's work as a mediator of this process. Of the 387 data analyzed, 74 correspond to the 1st person plural and 257 to the 3rd person plural. In the 1st person, 46 occurrences with the mark of verbal agreement were observed, compared to 28 cases of erasure. In the 3rd person, 257 occurrences showed a mark of agreement, while 51 registered absence. Linguistic factors such as phonics salience (NARO et. al. 1999; GUY, 1981; NARO, 1981; SCHERRE and NARO, 1998), type of subject, and subject filled in by the pronoun "Vocês" as well as extralinguistic variables such as gender, age, and education, directly influence the phenomenon. Thus, we conclude that, although the standard norm predominates, the presence of the non-standard norm evidences a dynamic linguistic variation scenario, marked by processes of normative reconfiguration.