Um estudo variacionista sobre o sujeito pronominal em dados escritos da cidade de Manaus (AM)

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the variation in the realization of the pronominal subject, of first, second and third persons, in texts written in the city of Manaus (AM) over four decades of the 20th and 21st centuries by the perspective of Variationist Sociolinguistics and the Historical Sociolinguistics, as well as the Gerativist Program. In order to better understand our object of study, we controlled the following independent linguistic variables: person of speech, mode of realization of the pronoun, verbal tense, subject’s animacy, verbal agreement and nominal form of the verb; in addition, we controlled the following independent extralinguistic variable: time frame. Regarding the sample, 263 ‘advertisements’ were transcribed and divided between the time frames: 63 from period I, 66 from period II, 68 from period III and 66 from period IV. All the advertisements are part of the advertisement collection of Jornal do Commercio, the oldest newspaper in circulation in the city of Manaus (AM). Then, we transcribed the phenomenon under study in this genre, following the rules of the project For the History of Brazilian Portuguese (Para a História do Português Brasileiro – PHPB), which has already been working with a corpus similar to ours. In total, 1172 data were categorized and submitted to the statistical program GoldvarbX. From those, 881 were categorized into the null pronominal subject variant, corresponding to 75% of the data, and 291 into the overt pronominal subject variant, corresponding to 25% of the data. Regarding the linguistic and extralinguistic variables, considering the general statistical analysis, the following ones were significant, in this order: person of speech, time frame, subject’s animacy and verbal tense. We also performed statistical analyzes for each time frame, showing that there are similarities and differences between the periods in terms of the selection of linguistic and extralinguistic variables. For example, the independent linguistic variable person of speech is selected in periods III and IV, but not in period I-II, which indicates that only in more recent periods does this variable assume an important role, mainly due to the insertion of new pronominals forms. Therefore, with this study, we intend to begin to elucidate the pathway of the historic evolution of the realization of the pronominal subject in data from texts written in Amazonas, considering the influence of independent linguistic and extralinguistic variables. In addition, we intend to contribute to the construction of a database that enables studies that aim to reconstruct a historical panel of Portuguese in Amazonas.