OVERLAPPING FACTORS IN THE ANALYSIS OF THE PRONOMINAL VARIATION NÓS/A GENTE

This article aimed to analyzed, from statistic results obtained after different rounds of the VARBRUL program, the overlapping factors in a joint analysis of the variables phonic projection, tonicity and verb tense in the study of the variation nós/a gente. The sample consisted of 24 interviews lasting 40-45 minutes each, made between 2007-2010 in Concordia – SC, and stratified according to gender, two age ranges (under 45 years and 50 years and over) and three levels of education (elementary school I, elementary school II and high school). By adopting the theoretical support of the Variation Linguistics we therefore sought to discuss methodological aspects related to overlapping factors of independent variables that are usually taken into account in the analysis of the pronominal variation nós/a gente in the subject position. Data were obtained through analysis of a corpus with 1553 occurrences of the surveyed pronouns: 770 of nós and 783 of a gente. Results showed that a joint analysis of the variables phonic projection, tonicity and verb tense significantly changes results, both with regard to the groups of selected factors and to the relative weight assigned to the analyzed variables.