Abstract

VIEIRA, Silvia Rodrigues  and  BRANDAO, Silvia Figueiredo. TIPOLOGY OF LINGUISTIC RULES AND STATUS OF VARIETIES/LANGUAGES: THE AGREEMENT IN PORTUGUESE. Lingüística [online]. 2014, vol.30, n.2, pp.81-112. ISSN 2079-312X.

The purpose of this paper is to relate the status of linguistic rules – based on the typology proposed by Labov (2003) – to the interpretation of varieties/languages with respect to their characterization. In order to do that, nominal and verbal number agreement in different structures in European and Brazilian Portuguese is explored, based on analyses developed according to the premisses of Variationist Sociolinguistics. The comparison and interpretation of the results of these studies in quantitative and qualitative terms, which helped us to outline clear differences between Brazilian and European patterns of agreement, have demonstrated that the typology of rules in three instances – categorical, semicategorical and variable – can serve as an efficient tool to evaluate linguistic typological profiles for various grammatical phenomena and a strong methodological procedure to distinguish what is apparently variable and what actually constitutes a general trend or default option

Keywords : Agreement; Linguistic rules; Tipology; European Portuguese; Brazilian Portuguese.

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