A REALIZAÇÃO DO SUJEITO PRONOMINAL NO PORTUGUÊS DOS TONGAS DE SÃO TOMÉ E PRÍNCIPE

Abstract

Languages formed through massive contact are the subject of numerous studies in the most diverse linguistic areas, all aimed at understanding the influence of contact and the socio-historical vicissitudes that involved the formation of these varieties for their structural characteristics. In this perspective, the objective of this thesis is to carry out the description and analysis of the operation of the Null Subject Parameter in Tonga Portuguese, a variety of Portuguese language spoken by descendants of continental Africans hired to work in cocoa and coffee plantations on the island of São Tomé, during the twentieth century. The analysis, carried out from the theoretical contribution of Parametric Sociolinguistics (TARALLO; KATO, 1989, 2007), Principles and Parameters theory (CHOMSKY, 1981) and Variationist Sociolinguistics (WEINREICH; LABOV; HERZOG, 2006[1968]; LABOV , 2008[1972]), has as corpus a speech sample composed of 18 interviews carried out in the Monte Café farm, with the interviewees being stratified by sex, age and education. The analysis was based on previous studies responsible for presenting the bundle of linguistic properties that are generally associated with the change in the marking of the Null Subject Parameter, especially those by Duarte (1995, 2012, 2018, 2019), Lucchesi (2009), Kapetula (2016), Oliveira (2016), among others. After being identified, the occurrences obtained were coded and submitted to the Goldvarb X variable rules program, which provided the percentages and relative weights for the selected variables. A total of 980 data were found in the analyzed speech sample, with 50.2% of subjects expressed phonetically and 49.8% of null subjects. These numbers are quite significant with regard to the behavior of the phenomenon in the Tonga speech community: although it is lower than that obtained in other varieties of Portuguese language, such as Brazilian Portuguese and Afro-Brazilian Portuguese, the high rate of subjects expressed points to a probable preference for the realized subject, which may accentuate in a few years. On the other hand, the results, very close to those found for Mozambican Portuguese, show that, compared to Brazilian Portuguese and Afro-Brazilian Portuguese, there is still a great influence of European Portuguese on African varieties of Portuguese. The linguistic variables selected as statistically relevant were Previous reference to the subject, with a preference for phonetically performed subjects in contexts of first mention (relative weight 0.717), Semantic characterization of the subject, with the feature [+ animated/ -human] favoring the subject expressed (relative weight 0.597), Presence of constituent to the left of the verb, whose results showed the contexts without constituents to the left of the verb as favoring the expressed subject (relative weight 0.535), and Personal-number ending of the verb, with the pattern [+ person/ +plural] favoring the expressed subject (relative weight 0.648). The only social variable selected was the age group, with younger informants the ones who most used the express subject (relative weight 0.602).