ABSTRACT
In the light of the Linguistics Change and Variation Theory (WEINR EICH; LABOV;
HERZOG, 2006) or Variationist sociolinguistics (LABOV, 1994, 2001, 2008), we investigate
the variation of the verbal agreement (VA) in the third person plural (3PP), in the popular
speech of Fortaleza – CE. From the linguistic point of view, this phenomenon characterizes
itself through the existence of the variants with VA marks in the 3PP (elas me tratavam bem)
and through the variants without marks (eles vinha atrás), in order to achieve this
morphosyntactic process. Before this phenomenon, we aim to point which linguistic and
social factors interfere in the usage, specially of the variant with no VA m arks. From this, our
goal is to point out which linguistic and social/extralinguistic factors interfere in the use,
specially the non-pattern variant. To do so, we built a sample composed by 72 informants and
considered only the inquiries of the DID (Dialogue Between Interviewed and Interviewer)
type. Such inquiries were extracted from the sound collection of the Oral Norm of the Popular
Oral Portuguese of Fortatelza Project – CE (NORPOFOR). Our informants were stratified
according to sex/gender (men and women), age (15 to 25; 26 to 49 and above 50 years old)
and education (0-4; 5-8; 9-11 years). As for the linguistic variable, we consider phonic
protrusion, the human feature of the subject, the position and distance between verb-subject,
the formal parallelism in the clause level, the formal parallelism in the discursive level and
the structural type of the subject. Altogether, we were able to localize 3.489 occurrence of the
phenomenon in question. This result was submitted to statistical analysis provided by
GoldVarb X. From this total, 2.283 (65,4%) occurrences correspond to the variant with VA
marks, while the other 1.206 (34,6%), to the variant with no marks. Such results point out
that, in the analyzed sample, the variant with VA marks is the most recur rent to the VA in the
3PP. Altogether, there were 5 rounds of analysis, in which only round 1 didn’t show any
remarkable results. This way, with round 2, we had a panoramic view of the phenomenon in
our sample. Round 3, on the other hand, made it possible to observe the phenomenon only in
the speech of the informants with 0-4 years of education, which means the informants with a
low level of education. With the round 4, we analyze the the VA in the 3PP, only on the
speech of informants with more than 50 years and, on round 5, we considered only data from
the speech of women from Fortaleza – Ce. From that, our results indicate that, from the
linguistic point of view, the variants phonemic protruding (less protruding verbal forms),
human feature of the subject (SN [non-human]), clausal parallelism on the speech level
(isolated verb or first of a series), positon and distance between verb-subject (close proposed
subject – one after the other – and far proposed subject – with 1 or more syllable between
them) and structural type of subject (SN-full simple, SN-full naked, SN-full composed and
quantifier) condition the use of the variant with marks of VA. With the observation of the
social variable, we found out that education (0-4 and 5-9 years), age (above 50 years) and
sex/gender (women) support the use of the variants with no marks of VA with the 3PP, in the
sample of the speech used in this study.
Keywords: Verbal Agreement. Variation. Variationist Sociolinguistics. Fortaleza’s Speech –
CE
