As construções relativas no Português Sateré-Mawé

Abstract

This thesis presents a variationist and descriptive analysis of relative clauses (CRel) in the Portuguese of the Sateré-Mawé communities of Vila Batista and Nova Alegria, both located in the rural area of Parintins-AM, based on the theoretical and methodological contributions of Variationist Sociolinguistics and the Theory of Linguistic Change, based on Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (2006 [1968]). It also follows the approach of linguistic contact and adopts the framework already developed in the Vertentes do Português Popular do Estado da Bahia Project, for the study of isolated rural Afro-Brazilian communities (Lucchesi; Baxter; Ribeiro, 2009). For the methodological treatment of the data, the analysis was subdivided into two: 1) a variationist analysis, in which two variation envelopes were fixed: response variable 1, referring to the non-prepositional strategies – the neutral relative and the resumptive relative – and response variable 2, bringing together the prepositional strategies – the pied-piping relative and the PP-chopping relative; and 2) a qualitative, descriptive and interpretative analysis of other types of relative clauses found in the corpus, such as: the reduced relative clauses of gerund, participle and infinitive; and the relative clauses without relativizer. The focus of this investigation was the correlation (Labov, 2006 [1966]; Oushiro, 2011) between the pied-piping relative (supported by traditional grammar) and the PP-chopping relative (an innovative strategy in Brazilian Portuguese - BP), having as corpus real speech data extracted from 16 surveys with samples of Portuguese spoken as L2 by the Sateré-Mawé indigenous people from the communities of Nova Alegria, Vila Batista (Parintins-AM) and Ponta Alegre (Barreirinha-AM). This sample of vernacular speech belongs to the Acervo do Português Vernáculo dos indígenas Sateré-Mawé de Parintins-AM project (Simas; Lucchesi, 2020). Based on the theoretical assumptions of the theory of linguistic change, a reflection is made on the socio-history of BP and the sociolinguistic framework of the Amazon, based on the proposal by Mattos and Silva (2004) and Lucchesi and Baxter (2009) that the linguistic changes observed in BP in comparison to European Portuguese can be explained by the intense linguistic contact between Indigenous, Portuguese and African speakers, detailing the ethnic-sociolinguistic composition constituted by the languages and peoples that were in contact during the colonial period, considering the two Portuguese colonies in Brazil and also focusing on the Amazonian scenario. The data were analyzed quantitatively using the R platform and the control of linguistic and social predictor variables, with the purpose of answering which linguistic and social factors act on the use of relative clauses in indigenous Portuguese. The results obtained with the quantitative and qualitative analysis indicate that relativization in Sateré-Mawé Portuguese presents convergences with Brazilian Popular Portuguese by expressing results similar to those found in other varieties of BP (Tarallo, 1983, 1993a, 1993b; Ribeiro, 2009; Ribeiro and Figueiredo, 2009; Lucchesi, 2015; Carneiro, 2018; Silva, E. 2020). By producing mostly unmarked relative clauses and morphologically simple relative clauses, this fact reflects the indirect effects of language contact and sociolinguistic polarization on the popular variety of BP that was acquired as L2 by Sateré-Mawé speakers in Amazonas, during the period of their sociolinguistic constitution. These facts allow to defend, in this thesis, two characteristics of relativization in Sateré-Mawé Portuguese: i. convergences with Brazilian Popular Portuguese, due to the predominance of neutral and PP-chopping relative clauses; ii. indications of the Sateré-Mawé itself, evidenced by the presence of reduced relative clauses and relative clauses without the relativizer.