Padrões de ordenação de constituintes das construções V2/V3 superficiais em cartas pessoais brasileiras dos séculos 19 e 20

In line with the model of grammar competition (Kroch, 1989; 2001), according to which the change in the syntactic domains is a process that develops via competition between different grammars, we describe and analyze the superficial constructions V2 / V3 in matrices / roots sentences of brazilian personal letters of the 19th and 20th centuries. The corpus, composed by 154 personal letters of Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Norte, is divided into three century halves: (i) latter half of the 19th century; (ii) first half of the 20th century; and (iii) latter half of the 20th century. Our focus was the observation of the nature of preverbal constituents in superficial constructions V2 (verb in second position in the sentence) and V3 (verb in third position in the sentence), with a special attention on the position of the subject. Based on the various diachronical studies about the Portuguese ordination standards (Ambar (1992); Ribeiro (1995, 2001); Paixão de Sousa (2004); Paiva (2011), Coelho and Martins (2009, 2012)), our study sought to realize what are empirical ordination standards that involve superficial constructions V2 / V3 and how these patterns structure syntactically within a formal theoretical perspective (Chomsky, 1981; 1986), more specifically, in accordance with studies of Antonelli (2011), and Costa & Galves (2002). The survey results show that the data from the second half of the 19th century – unlike the first and second half of the 20th century data – have a greater balance in relation to the syntactic nature of preverbal constituent (contiguous or not), so that, in this period, the occurrence of orders with the subject in a preverbal position arrives at, at most, 52% (231/444 data); while in the 48% (213/444 data) remaining, the preverbal constituents are represented by a non-subject constituent, almost always an adverbial adjunct. Seen the results, we advocate that the brazilian personal letters of the 19th century have ordination patterns associated with a V2 system and an SV system, configuring, therefore, a possible competition process between different grammars that instantiate or a V2 system or an SV system. In other words, the brazilian letters of the 19th century instantiate a competition between the grammar of Classic Portuguese (a V2 system) and the grammars of Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese (an SV system). Therefore, that period is subject to the completion of two distinct parametric markings: (i) verb moved to the Fin core (grammar of Classic Portuguese) and (ii) verb moved to the T core (grammar of Brazilian Portuguese /European Portuguese). On the other hand, in the personal letters of the 20th century (first and second halves), there is a clear increase in ordenation patterns associated with the SV system, which shows more stable.

Cartas oficiais norte-riograndenses dos séculos XVIII, XIX e XX : constituição e caracterização de um corpus diacrônico

The diachronic studies marked the first decades of the 20th century in Brazilian linguistics, passing by an ostracism period after the 50s. Mainly from the 90s especially with the project, created in 1997, Para a história do português brasileiro (PHPB), which has systemized, in national ambit, the programme related to the area of diachrony the historical studies retake forces and have gradually increased since then. Our work is set in the new scene of Brazilian historical linguistics and it is associated to two research programmes: i) the constitution of a diachronic corpus; ii) the diachrony of text and discourse. As regards the first programme, we made effort to constitute a diachronic corpus of official letters about Rio Grande do Norte, we called cartas oficiais norte-rio-grandenses, written in 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. The chosen for bureaucrat letters occurred for they represent a textual category very productive in historical contexts, mostly 18th and 19th centuries, in which the command of writing was the least and also because they bring, almost always explicitly, the information of where, when, for whom and from whom, as remembers Fonseca (2003). The rules for constituting the corpus were based, although not strictly, on the orientation from PHPB. In respect to the second programme, we set up on the ideas of coserian base came from the studies on discourse traditions (TD) (Koch, 1997; Kabatek, 2006) amongst which that the texts are shaped so as to follow their own tradition (Coseriu, 2007), and we turned to Diplomatics (Belloto, 2002) in order to do the characterization of this corpus by the application of concepts from Diplomatics and TD as well as by the presentation of the structures that form those official letters: their textual genres, a kind of TD, with their macrostructures; and some of their formulaic expressions (microstructures), another sort of TD. This stage of characterizing will pay attention, as far as possible, to the dynamic between tradition and innovation that happen in the actualization of those textual structures along the centuries. This work intends to contribute with the researches connected to Historical Linguistics in Rio Grande do Norte, more specifically the ones related to the constitution of diachronic corpora and to TD; and with the study of official documents, textual category about which there are almost no studies (cf. Silveira, 2007)