Variations in the Nominal Agreement in the Language Spoken in the Capital of Alagoas

Abstract

Based on the theoretical-methodological assumptions of variationist sociolinguistics, the correlation between the usage of nominal agreement in Maceio and the linguistics of linear position, grammatical word class and the relation of grammatical word class with the nucleus is analyzed and the extralinguistic variables level of education, age range and gender. For this, speech samples from 48 citizens of Maceio, stratified by the criteria of gender, level of education (low, basic, secondary and higher education), age range (from 16 to 35, 36 to 55 and from 56 to 80 years-old) were analyzed. It was verified by this survey that the first position, articles, demonstrative and possessive prepositions favor the nominal agreement, as well as that female more educated speaker, belonging to the lowest age group are more likely to use the agreement. By comparing there results with those of Pinheiro (2012), Silva (2014) and Brandão (2011), though, it can be observed that both in Brandão (2011) and Silva (2014), the intermediate group stands out in the usage of plural morpheme, while in this survey it is the youngest group that stands out on its usage.

Keywords

• nominal agreement
• linguistics variation
• maceió