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Phrase-level parallelism effect on noun phrase number agreement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 September 2001

Maria Marta Pereira Scherre
Maria Marta Pereira Scherre
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
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Abstract

Linguistic parallelism (i.e., the tendency of similar forms to occur together within a stretch of discourse) has been shown to be very strong in many linguistic phenomena and in a vast number of languages. Examining the role of phrase-level parallelism on noun phrase number agreement, this article demonstrates that Puerto Rican Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese exhibit more similarities than differences with regard to this constraint. A detailed analysis of Brazilian Portuguese data is presented, and the results are compared with those found by Poplack (1980a) for Puerto Rican Spanish. Guy's (1981a) and Labov's (1994) hypothesis about missing zeroes in Brazilian Portuguese is also discussed. In conclusion, it is claimed that the phrase-level parallelism effect on noun phrase number agreement is embedded in a universal principle of linguistic use: parallel processing.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , March 2001 , pp. 91 - 107
Copyright
© 2001 Cambridge University Press

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