Resumo:
The Brazilian Portuguese (PB) presents a chart of linguistic variation in the usage of future
tense, which can be accomplished in several ways, like synthetic form, the present tense or the
periphrastic forms. Through empirical research, we sought to investigate some strategies of use
of the future tense realized by speakers of popular rural Portuguese the municipality of Poções Bahia, as well as describing and analyzing linguistic and social contexts that can be decisive
for the phenomenon in focus. The research is based on the theoretical-methodological model of
Sociolinguistics Variationist. In order to get quantitative data, we used the computer statistical
program VARBRUL which also selected the statistically significant variables. Quantitative
analysis of variable data was carried from twelve selected surveys of “Projeto Vertentes do
Português Popular do Estado da Bahia” and was restricted to the form of the present tense, not
morphologically markedly as a result of language contact in the formation of popular
Portuguese. For embedding the structural variation fifteen variables were defined, but only the
VARBRUL program selected six variables statistically significant. From the five variables
defined for the social embedding, only two of them were considered relevant: gender and
staying outside of the community. The fact that the variable age has not been selected prevented
check if it is occurring stable variation or change in progress. Considered the innovative way,
the results showed that the periphrastic variant is the most realized by speakers of rural area of
Poções city. Secondly they use the form of the present tense. The use of the synthetic form is
very limited in that community, only 1% of cases. These data confirm a trend of Brazilian
Portuguese to replace the synthetic form by periphrastic forms
