SUBJECT EXPRESSION IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE: CONSTRUCTION AND FREQUENCY EFFECTS

Brazilian Portuguese (henceforth BP) has for long been considered as a Null-subject language due to its variability in regards to subject expression (e.g. Era bom porque eu diminuia de peso... era muito gordinha ‘That was good because then I could lose some weight... (I) was a bit chubby.’ C33:179). Such variability has been attributed to the language’s once rich inflectional system, and the reported increase in rate of subject expression has been seen as a result of changes to the system (Barbosa, Duarte, & Kato, 2005; Monteiro, 1994b; Negrao & Viotti, 2000). Moreover, there is agreement among several scholars that the variability can still be accounted for in terms of traditional factors such as emphasis, clarity, and ambiguity of the Tense, Aspect, and Mood (TAM) system. In this work, I demonstrate that, rather than an effect of such pragmatic factors as these, subject expression in BP is to a large degree an artifact of the frequency of use of certain constructions of different degrees of fixedness. The analysis proposed here falls under the framework of usage-based linguistics in which grammar is believed to be shaped by discourse as speakers produce it online (Bybee, 2006). Thus, any linguistic pattern observed in speech is emergent and a result of repetition

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