THE USE OF THIRD PERSON ACCUSATIVE PRONOUNS IN SPOKEN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE: AN ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENT TV GENRES by Flávia Stocco Garcia A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Manitoba in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Department of Linguistics University of Manitoba Winnipeg Copyright © 2015 by Flávia Stocco Garcia ABSTRACT This thesis presents an analysis of third person accusative pronouns in Brazilian Portuguese. With the aim to analyze the variation between the use of standard (prescribed by normative grammar) and non-standard pronouns found in oral language, I gathered data from three kinds of TV show (news, non-scripted and soap-opera) in order to determine which form of pronoun is more common and if there is any linguistic and/or sociolinguistic factors that will influence on their usage. Based on data collected, I demonstrate that non-standard forms are favored in general and that the rules prescribed by normative grammar involving standard forms are only followed in specific contexts. Among all the variables considered for the analysis, the ones that showed to be significant were the kind of show, the context of the utterance, the socio-economic status of the speaker and verbs in the infinitive. Considering my results, I provide a discussion regarding to which extent the distribution of the 3rd-person pronouns on TV reflect their use by Brazilians and a brief discussion of other issues related to my findings conclude this work. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to my advisor, Verónica Loureiro-Rodríguez, for all her help during the completion of this work. Her time, patience and insights were very much appreciated. I am also extremely grateful to Kevin Russell for the help and feedback he provided me during this project. This project would have been impossible without their continuous support and guidance. My sincere and deepest appreciation goes to my parents who are so far away but whose love, support and encouragement have always been so present and important in this journey. And my special thanks goes to my husband, my partner and best friend, who was always there to support me through the difficult and stressful times. I love you all very much! 3 TABLE OF 4 Abstract ______________________________________________________________ 2 Acknowledgements _____________________________________________________ 3 Table of contents _______________________________________________________ 4 List of tables ___________________________________________________________ 6 List of figures __________________________________________________________ 7 Abbreviations __________________________________________________________ 8 1. Introduction _________________________________________________________ 9 2. Context: Standardization in Brazilian Portuguese ___________________________ 14 2.1 What is a standardized language ___________________________________ 14 2.1.1 Education and Language Prescriptivism _______________________ 17 2.2 So, what happens in Brazil? ______________________________________ 19 2.2.1 Dialects and Dialectology in Brazil __________________________ 19 2.2.2 Standard Brazilian Portuguese ______________________________ 22 2.3 Brazilian vs. European Portuguese _________________________________ 24 2.4 Previous studies on Portuguese pronouns ___________________________ 25 2.4.1 Studies on third person pronouns ____________________________ 27 2.5 Summary _____________________________________________________ 30 3. Third person accusative pronouns in Brazilian Portuguese ____________________ 31 3.1 Personal pronouns in BP _________________________________________ 31 3.2 What are clitics? _______________________________________________ 34 3.3 Clitic placement in BP __________________________________________ 36 3.3.1 Proclitics ______________________________________________ 36 3.3.2 Enclitics _______________________________________________ 38 3.3.3 Endoclitics ______________________________________________ 40 3.3.4 Clitic placement in a verbal sequence _________________________ 41 3.3.5 Optional usage of clitics ___________________________________ 43 3.4 The nominative ele ‘he’ as direct object in Brazilian Portuguese __________ 44 3.4.1 Prescriptive usage ________________________________________ 44 3.4.2 Descriptive usage ________________________________________ 44 3.5 Summary _________________________________________________________ 48 4. Methodology _______________________________________________________ 51 4.1 Corpus _______________________________________________________ 51 4.2 Data Collection ________________________________________________ 55 4.3 Method ______________________________________________________ 57 4.3.1 Standards vs. non-standards: whole data ______________________ 59 4.3.2 Standards vs. non-standards: enclitics only ____________________ 60 4.3.3 Proclitics vs. enclitics: standards only ________________________ 60 4.4 Summary ____________________________________________________ 61 4 5. Descriptive Results __________________________________________________ 62 5.1 Standard pronouns found in the data _______________________________ 62 5.1.1 Proclitics ______________________________________________ 63 5.1.1.1 Mandatory uses ____________________________________ 64 5.1.1.2 Optional uses _____________________________________ 66 5.1.2 Enclitics _______________________________________________ 67 5.1.2.1 With verbs in the infinitive __________________________ 68 5.1.2.2 With verbs ending in a vocalic sound ___________________ 70 5.1.3 Endoclitics ______________________________________________ 72 5.2 Non-Standard pronouns found in the data ____________________________ 74 5.3 Standard vs. non-standard pronouns according to the kind of show ________ 75 5.3.1 News shows ____________________________________________ 76 5.3.2 Non-scripted shows _______________________________________ 79 5.3.3 Soap operas _____________________________________________ 83 5.4 Summary _____________________________________________________ 83 6. Statistical Results ____________________________________________________ 85 6.1 Kind of pronoun: standard vs. non-standard __________________________ 85 6.1.1 Whole data ______________________________________________ 85 6.1.2 Enclitics ________________________________________________ 90 6.2 Clitic placement: proclitic vs. enclitic _______________________________ 92 6.3 Summary _____________________________________________________ 92 7. Discussion __________________________________________________________ 94 8. Conclusion _________________________________________________________ 112 References ___________________________________________________________ 114 Appendix ____________________________________________________________ 118 5 LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Personal Pronouns in BP _________________________________________ 33 Table 2. Third Person Personal Pronouns in BP _______________________________ 47 Table 3. Third Person Personal Pronouns in BP ______________________________ 49 Table 4. TV shows list and number of hours in each category ____________________ 55 Table 5. Variables extracted from data ______________________________________ 56 Table 6. Proclitics ______________________________________________________ 64 Table 7. Enclitics _______________________________________________________ 68 Table 8. Pronoun distribution according to the kind of show _____________________ 75 Table 9. Accusative pronouns in the news shows ______________________________ 76 Table 10. Accusative pronouns in the non-scripted shows _______________________ 79 Table 11. Accusative pronouns used by the hosts in each NS show _______________ 80 Table 12. Accusative pronouns in the soap-operas ____________________________ 83 6 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Regions and northern and southern dialect division ___________________ 20 Figure 2. Known dialects of Brazilian Portuguese ____________________________ 21 Figure 3. Variable importance for random forest 1 (standards vs. non-standards with the whole dataset) ________________________________________________________ 86 Figure 4. Inference tree 1 (standards vs. non-standards with the whole dataset) ______ 88 Figure 5. Variable importance for random forest 2 (standards vs. non-standards with enclitic structures) _____________________________________________________ 90 Figure 6. Inference tree 2 (standards vs. non-standards with enclitic structures) ______ 91 Figure 7. The vicious circle of linguistic discrimination _______________________ 108 Figure 8. Sign with sentence showing a non-standard form of first person plural accusative pronoun ____________________________________________________ 114 7 ABBREVIATIONS 1 first person 2 second person 3 third person ACC accusative COND conditional DAT dative F feminine FUT future GER gerund IMP imperative IMPF imperfect M masculine NEG negative NOM nominative PART participle PAST past PL plural PRES present REFL reflexive SG singular SUBJ subjunctive 8 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The present study constitutes an analysis of third person accusative pronouns in spoken Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Considering the existence of a high variation involving the rules and usages of these pronouns, my purpose is to analyze the variation between the use of the standard (prescribed by normative grammar) and non-standard forms found in oral language. Oral Brazilian Portuguese often differs from the normative variety taught at schools and prescribed