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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter Mouton August 25, 2015

Competing motivations and number variation

  • Roberto Gomes Camacho EMAIL logo and Mircia Hermenegildo Salomão

Abstract

In this paper, we submit data on variable plural marking in non-verbal predicates, preceded or not by a copula, to sociolinguistic treatment. The data was extracted from a corpus collected in the northwestern region of the state of São Paulo, in Brazil. The study was intended to examine whether variable plural marking in non-verbal predicates such as nouns, adjectives and past participles can be explained either by exclusively formal or exclusively functional constraints, or by the interaction between both, that is, by competing motivations. Results show that neither functional nor formal motivations alone rule these types of phenomena, which happen to be strongly constrained by a specific external factor: years of schooling.

Acknowledgement

We are very grateful to two anonymous reviewers for insightful comments on earlier draft versions of this paper. Of course, we are fully responsible for the shortcomings that still remain.

Appendix

List of Abbreviations

1

first person

3

third person

AUX

auxiliary

F

feminine

IND

indicative

INF

infinitive

IPFV

imperfective

M

masculine

PL

plural

PRF

perfect

PRS

present

PST

past

PTCP

participle

PROG

progressive

SG

singular

ØPL

zero plural

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Published Online: 2015-8-25
Published in Print: 2015-9-1

©2015 by De Gruyter Mouton

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