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Subject omission and functional compensation: Evidence from written Brazilian Portuguese

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Vera Lúcia Paredes Silva
Vera Lúcia Paredes Silva
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
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Abstract

In Portuguese, subject pronouns may be omitted or expressed explicitly. This variable usage is often attributed to the richness of the system of verbal desinences. However, evidence drawn from a sample of informal written language—personal correspondence of people from Rio de Janeiro—shows that the most important constraints on pronoun usage in subject position are discouse-based. The pronoun tends to be used whenever it is needed to clarify or highlight the correct referent from among a set of possible candidates. Furthermore, the pronoun is less likely to occur when its clasue is tightly connected to the preceding discourse. The quantitative analysis presented here supports the hypothesis that pronoun usage is “functional” in the sense that semantically relevant information tends to be preserved in surface structure.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , March 1993 , pp. 35 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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