O preenchimento do sujeito pronominal no português afro-brasileiro na comunidade quilombola de Lagoinha.

Abstract

One of the aspects that differentiate Brazilian Portuguese from European Portuguese is the realization of the pronominal subject. According to the Theory of Principles and Parameters, proposed by Chomsky (1981), European Portuguese is a typical pro-drop language. This definition is given when the pronominal subject is not realized in certain contexts. Brazilian Portuguese, on the other hand, would be going through a phase of transition from a pro-drop language to a non-pro-drop language. This change is related to the significant reduction in the inflectional paradigms of the verb. This work seeks to provide a better understanding of the variations of the Portuguese language in Brazil, through a mapping of aspects related to the completion of the subject in popular Afro-Brazilian Portuguese in the quilombola community of Lagoinha, located in the rural area of the municipality of Nova Canaã, Bahia. Initially, it consists of an analysis of the null subject parameter (or pro-drop parameter) within the scope of the Theory of Principles and Parameters, proposed by Chomsky (1981), in Universal Grammar. Based on a study on Popular Portuguese in Brazil, we analyze the history of the Portuguese language in Brazil, since the moment that Portugues arrived in the country and was implanted in Brazilian territory, investigating the initial situation of contact between several languages. The research has its empirical basis in a sample of vernacular speech collected from six residents of the quilombola community of Lagoinha, in the Municipality of Nova Canaã, in the Southwest region of Bahia. These subjects, all with low level of education, were distributed by both sexes and by three age groups. The analysis of the realization of the pronominal subject in this linguistic sample was based on the Variationist Sociolinguistics (LABOV, 1972). The results indicated a situation of slight disadvantage in filling out the subject pronoun (48,4%) in comparison to the null subject variant (51,6%). This situation of variation in Brazilian Portuguese shows that it cannot be classified as a pro-drop language. Similar results can also be observed in Lucchesi (2004, 2009d), Duarte (1995) and Novaes (2007, 2021). When analyzing the results of the age group variable, in which the change process is observed in apparent time, we noticed that the youngest (age group II and I) are the ones who most perform the full pronominal subject.