Gragoatá (Dec 2006)
Usage of the subjunctive mood in relative and completive clauses in African-Brazilian Portuguese
Abstract
This works presents a study of the variation of the usage of subjunctive mood in relative and completive clauses on the speaking of four black rural Brazilian communities at the countryside of Bahia. Based on the theoretical and methodological framework of the Sociolinguistics of varieties and by means of VARBRUL software-set for the quantitative processing of the linguistic data, this work analyzed the adequacy of that variable process in the social and linguistic structure of the speaking communities. From the linguistic point-of-view, the subjunctive-mood forms occur more widely in two situations: (1) one of a morphological component, in which subjunctive forms are compatible with both verbs and with time when subjunctive X indicative opposition is more prominent; (2) the other of semantic component, in which the context of unreality tends towards a wider usage of subjunctive mood.
