Forma locativa + sintagma preposicional locativo: análise da fala culta nas duas variedades do português

Abstract

The article adresses the occurrence of the locative to the left of the locative preposition alphrase in samples of educated speech in the city of Rio de Janeiro, in the 1970s and 1990s, on the basis of Labov'svariationist sociolinguistics (LABOV, 1972;1994), for a short-term real-time (trendand panel) study. The hypothesis suggested -on the basis of intuitive generalisation -is that the use of the locative is related to the presence of [+definite] morphological elements in the prepositional phrase. Variationist analysis indicates that the use of locatives seems to be related primarily to two independent variables: the type of locative term contained in the prepositional frase and the type of preposition introducing the locative prepositional phrase. Contrary to what is expected from introspective analysis, occurrences of the locative prepositional frase introduced by the preposition "a" and preceded by the locative were attested, as well as the locative with no morphological category together with the preposition. The trend and panel studies revealed that the community may be considered unstable and the individual, stable, thus admitting the hypothesis of generational change. Speech data were also gathered in the city of Lisbon, although it was not possible to conduct a panel study for lack of a complete sample. The two varieties of Portuguese are compared in percentage terms only. The phenomenon is not frequent in Portuguese and seems to be restricted to speech.