SINGULARITIES IN THE SYNTAX OF BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE WRITTEN IN THE NORTHEASTERN REGION IN THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES

ABSTRACT

In the field of diachronic syntax, I present a diatopic-diachronic overview of three different studies regarding morphosyntactic phenomena from Portuguese written in Brazil in the 19^thand 20^thcenturies: the use of the subject pronoun você (you); the expression of the dative complement with reference to the second person singular; and the clitic syntax in relation to agreement and position in simple and complex predicate sentences. This diatopic-diachronic overview supports the hypothesis that, in the vast Brazilian territory of the 19^thand 20^thcentury, the innovative forms of the Brazilian Portuguese grammar are implemented expressively in the end of the 19th century. The Northeast region stands out first in comparison to the Southeast and South regions. Writings from the 19^thcentury, from Northeastern Brazil, present reflections of a system that was already implemented (1) with the pronoun você in the function of subject, (2) with the pronoun lhe as a form of dative complement with reference to the second person singular, with an expressive increase of the prepositioned forms ( a/para + te/tu/você ), and (3) with a system of clitics with few cases of interpolation and contraction of pronouns and innovative forms without elevation in verbal complexes and with proclisis in the initial position most common in the sentence.

diachronic syntax; pronoun você; second person datives; clitics; northeast region of Brazil