Brazilian Portuguese and the null subject parameter: variation and syntax

Maria Eugênia L. Duarte

Sat 9-10:40 B

Brazilian Portuguese (BP) is undergoing a process of change in the representation of the pronominal referential subject, which clearly sets it apart from European Portuguese and other so-called pro-drop languages, such as Spanish and Italian. In Duarte (1993), a diachronic study based on popular theater plays, it is shown that such a change can be related to the reduction of the inflectional paradigm due to the replacement of some pronominal forms that take different verbal endings. Table 1, below, illustrates the change within the Present Tense of amar "to love"

Table (1): Pronominal and Inflectional Paradigms in Brazilian Portuguese

Pres./Num. Pronoun Paradigm 1 Paradigm 2 Paradigm 3

1rst sing. Eu am o am o am o

2nd sing. Tu am a s - -

Você am a am a am a

3rd sing. Ele/Ela am a am a am a

1st plur. Nós am a mos am a mos -

A gente - - -

2nd plur. Vós am a is - -

Vocês am a m am a m am a m

3rd plur. Eles/Elas am a m am a m am a m

As table (1) shows, BP evolved from a paradigm with six distinctive form (plus two extra second person forms of addressing), the same still used in European Portuguese (Par. 1), to a four distinct form paradigm, because of the loss of the 'direct' second person forms (tu/vós); this paradigm (Par. 2), restricted today to the speech of an older generation, co-exists with paradigm 3, the only one used by younger generations (under 35 years), showing no more than three distinctive endings, as a result of the replacement of 1st person plural nós by the expression a gente, which combines with the 3rd person singular verb form. The paradigm's functional uniformity (cf. Roberts, 1993), responsible for the identification of null subjects, is therefore lost.

The present study, based on the speech of 12 upper educated people, belonging to three different age groups, follows the track of the loss and makes it possible (a) to identify the contexts which were first defeated by the full pronoun variant, as well as the ones which still resist to it; (b) to confirm the implementation of the change thorough the comparison of the three age groups' performance, which progresses at a constant rate throughout the linguistic contexts tested (cf. Kroch, 1989); and (c) to find evidence of the embedding of the change in the system, among which the high frequency of left dislocated subjects -- completely absent in the above mentioned pro-drop languages -- in any syntactic context (root or embedded clause), with any kind of referent, independently of its grammatical person informational status or [+/- animate] feature.

The work concludes, following Roberts' suggestion, that a defective system of null subjects, restricted to certain persons and contexts, is part of the process of changing from a null subject language to a non null subject one and, following Tarallo's observation (1992, 1993), that this change is related to a larger ensemble of changes in pronominalization strategies, characteristic of an emerging Brazilian grammar.