“Eu tinha trago um cigarro antes que tivesse chego em casa”: a study on the emergence of new past participle forms in Brazilian Portuguese
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31513/linguistica.2024.v20n2a64479Abstract
This study examines the variation of past participle forms in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), aiming to explain the emergence and use of innovative forms such as trago and chego. Research on BP (Barbosa, 1993; Lobato, 1999; Silva, 2008; Miara, 2013) has shown that speakers tend to prefer irregular forms when producing innovative past participle forms. To achieve the objectives of the study, two experiments (one on production and another on evaluation) were conducted with young university speakers. The theoretical framework combines the principles of Variationist Sociolinguistics (Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog, 1968) and Exemplar Models (Bybee, 2001, 2010; Pierrehumbert, 2003, 2016). By integrating the results of both experiments, it is possible to argue that the emergence of new participle forms is due to an analogy process, whereby existing forms in the language (chego and trago) are integrated into more robust networks of participle forms (pego and pago), considering their phonetic similarity (presence of the consonant [ɡ]) and the fact that they are already established items in the language (verbs in the first person singular present indicative form). Additionally, the non-stigmatized evaluation of these innovative forms among speakers with higher education levels might act as a propagation factor for these forms within the speech community.
Keywords: Participle. Variation and change. Exemplar Model.
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