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BY 4.0 license Open Access Published by De Gruyter 2020

Variation in the paradigms of tu and você

Subject and complements in letters from Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1860–1989

From the book Address in Portuguese and Spanish

  • Márcia Cristina de Brito Rumeu

Subject and complements in letters from Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1860–1989

10.1515/9783110701234.

Abstract

This chapter presents a quantitative analysis of the use of Portuguese second person singular (2SG) address pronouns tu and voce in correlation with second person verbal complements (te, a ti, prep. + ti, voce, a voce, para voce, prep. + voce, lhe, o/a, zero (Ø)). We analyse the diversity of 2SG verbal complements in accusative, dative and oblique structures in letters written by individuals from the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, between 1860 and 1989. The results show that oblique verbal complementation functions as a syntactic context that tends to favor the use of voce (Rumeu & Oliveira 2016), whereas the dative and accusative functions are seen as survival contexts for the clitic pronominal te.

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