Revista de Estudos da Linguagem

29-59

Authors: Maria Marta Pereira Scherre

Linguistic parallelism has been widely discussed in variationistliterature as an independent variable, often in the form of repetitionof the same variant of the dependent variable, in many linguisticphenomena and in a vast number of languages. In this paper, Idiscuss three main aspects of parallelism: (i) whether it can beinterpreted within the functional theoretical framework; (ii) theexistence of underlying functional principles; and (iii) whether itcan be accounted for by a single principle. In my discussion, I willpresent results for three linguistic phenomena that are affected bylinguistic parallelism on the discourse, clausal, syntagmatic, andword levels in Brazilian Portuguese. I will then discuss a largebody of research in which this constraint has been analyzed. Iconclude that the study of linguistic parallelism shows that thestudy of language use and structure can be better accounted forthrough variationist theory, functionalism, and discourse analysisworking together.

Authors: Maria Cecília Mollica, Kátia Henriques do Fundo, Luciana da Silva Gomes, Mônica da Silva Pinto Oliveira, Renata Flávia da Silva

This article focuses on the aphesis of es- with the purpose ofinvestigating (a) why it is restricted to a very limited portion of thelexicon and (b) how a relationship between variation and functioncan be established regarding aphesis. The results show that suchvariation is controlled by principles of communicability. The moreformal the speech (such as non-spontaneous narratives) the morechances of retention of es-.

109-120

Authors: Anthony Julius Naro

Both functional and non-functional variation exist on a large scale.A typically non-functional phenomenon is subject/verb concord,where plural markers are used more often precisely in thoseenvironments in which they are unnecessary from the point ofview of communicating meaning, such as when the subject andverb are adjacent. On the other hand, the use of realized versuszero subject pronouns is fully functional: such pronouns tend tobe used more frequently in environments in which their absencewould lead to ambiguity in interpretation on the discourse level.Non-functional variation is a characteristic of phenomena that arein an advanced stage of diachronic evolution, near the end of thefunctional cycle. Functional variation can be found near thebeginning of the cycle. In this regard, variable agreement has beenoccurring for several centuries, while the marked increase infrequency of use of subject pronouns is very recent.

139-160

Authors: Helena Gryner

In portuguese if-clauses there occur three morphosyntactic alternativeforms – present indicative (PI), futur subjunctive (FS) and imperfectsubjunctive (IS). Traditional grammars correlate these to the threesemantic categories of realis, potentialis and irrealis. Actually, therealis appear only in PI and the irrealis in IS. However, sociolinguisticanalysis shows that the eventual potentialis often has a PI form; andthe habitual or generic potentialis, that are similar to the realis, mayappear in the FS. This paper focuses on the in/variability of theseforms. It identifies an iconically motivated epistemic hierarchy wherestatistical distribution codifies the probabilistic perception of thereality continuum.