As estruturas reflexivas no português popular do interior do Estado da Bahia.

Abstract

Based on the theoretical and methodological foundations of Variationist Sociolinguistics and the statistical rigor of the GOLDVARB X software package, this thesis analyzed the existing change processes in structures considered reflective of popular Portuguese in the inland of Bahia, Brazil. We assume that such processes have been originated in contact situations between Portuguese and indigenous and African languages through a process of irregular linguistic transmission of light type occurred in the early centuries of Brazilian society formation, whose effects would have reached at greater or lesser extent the different speech communities of Brazilian Portuguese, as the following continuum shows in descending order: African-Brazilian rural communities > ethnically non-marked rural communities > small urban centers> major urban centers. Initially, the dependent variables utterance of the so called reflective clitic and person mark on the so called reflective clitic were to be analyzed, but the latter was not a structured variation phenomenon justifying an analysis and was, therefore, removed from the work, showed only in a specific subsection with an overview of its variants‟ frequency. As regards the variable utterance of the so called reflective clitic, the initial data showed that the phenomenon occurs with a frequency of 43.9%, much higher than the 15% found by Souza (2011) in rural African-Brazilian communities, reinforcing the guiding hypotheses of this research. Thus, analyzing the utterance frequencies of clitics per municipality and comparing them to the results obtained by Souza (2011), there was a distinct gradation of the clitic‟s frequency: 15% in the African Brazilian rural communities, 22.6% in Poções, 53.3% in Santo Antônio de Jesus and 56.7% in Feira de Santana. This is an empirical evidence for the hypothesis that variation in use of the so called reflective clitic would have been originated the by a mild type of irregular linguistic transmission occurred in the past, reaching with more intensity the African-Brazilian rural communities and to a lesser degree other speech communities, depending on the geographical proximity to big urban centers and, therefore, greater access to urban language standards. As for the linguistic conditioning of analyzed variable, it was found that the realization of the clitic is favored: (i) when it has a reflexive, reciprocal and inherent character – the first two because they have more informational value and the last for being part of the verb‟s lexical specification; (ii) by the presence of a syntactic subject with thematic patient role; (iii) by the presence of any person of different discourse and , considered non-persons; and (iv) by the presence of semantic subject with animacy trace [+ animated]. Still, regarding the social conditioning of this variable, it was determined that the completion of the so called reflective clitic is favored by speakers coming from Santo Antônio de Jesus and Feira de Santana, living in the municipality‟s seat and with some schooling, due to greater access the linguistic patterns different from the vernacular of their speech community, either because they are geographically closer to a major urban center, by integrating the urban environment of their own municipality or influenced by formal learning.