VARIANTS IMPERATIVE FORMS OF SECOND PERSON IN CENTURIES XIX AND XX: SOCIAL EXPRESSION

Abstract

In this text, looking to trace the synchronic reality of Brazilian Portuguese on the variable imperative grammatical expression of the second person singular ((“fala você”) vs. (“Agora seja tu o laso de união...”,1919)). Based on the analysis of 19th and 20th century personal letters,written by educated Brazilians, members of a same Brazilian family (the Pedreira Ferraz-Magalhaes family), whose sociolinguistic profiles have beenidentified (CONDE SILVEST RE, 2007; ROMAINE, 2010; HERNÀNDEX-CAMPOY; CONDE SILVESTRE, 2014), the results expound the representativeness of Gender and Age group as significant social categories for research on the variable imperative grammatical expression of the second person singular. Following the orientation of Labov’s methodological quantitative sociolinguistic analysis (LABOV, 1994,2001), is confirmed the hypothesis that the abrasileirado imperative, in terms of Scherre (2007), tends become established in Brazilian Portugueseas young people seemed be heading in the historic direction of change inprogress.

Keywords

• Imperative grammatical
• Tu/você variation
• Linguistic variation