As orações relativas no português falado em Feira de Santana-BA

Abstract

This paper makes a sociolinguistic analysis of the use of strategies of Relativization in the popular and standard norms of the spoken Portuguese in Feira de Santana-BA, based on the theoretical-methodological contribution of the Variationist Sociolinguistics, based on Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (2006 [1968]). For the methodological treatment of the analysis, the relative clauses are subdivided in non-prepositional strategies – the gap-leaving variant and the resumptive pronoun strategy– and prepositional strategies – the pied piping variant, the PP-chopping strategy, the PP-chopping strategy with resumptive and the where and when relatives. The focus of this research is the covariation between the pied piping strategy (subscribed by the traditional grammar) and the PP-chopping strategy (considered an innovative strategy in the Brazilian Portuguese), having as corpus real speech data extracted from 24 interviews (12 of the standard norm and 12 of the popular norm) of the project The Portuguese language of the Bahia semiarid region – Phase 3: samples of the spoken languagein Feira de Santana-Ba, headquartered in the Nucleus of Portuguese Language Studies (NELP). Starting from the theoretical assumptions of the theory of variation and linguistic change, this study brings a reflection on the Brazilian Portuguese (PB) socio-history, highlighting the linguistic contact, the late urbanization and schooling of Brazil, the irregular linguistic transmission, the hypothesis of approach between the popular and standard norms of PB and the socio-history of the urban center of Feira de Santana-BA, emphasizing its commercial characteristics, the migratory factor and its geographical position. The data were investigated based on linguistic and social variables in order to answer which linguistic and sociocultural factors act in the variable use of the PP-chopping relative and the pied piping strategy and if there is an approximation or a distancing of the standard and popular norms in regards to the use of these strategies in the Portuguese of Feira de Santana. The results confirm the syntactic change attested by Tarallo (1983), by evidencing the majority use of the PP-chopping relative by the feirense speakers in both standard and popular norms, allowing to the contestation that there is an approximation of the norms in the spoken Portuguese in of Feira de Santana, confirming what Lucchesi (2001) and Mattos and Silva (2004) ratified about the Brazilian Portuguese.