THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DEFINITE REFERENCE DETERMINER SYSTEM IN THE PORTUGUESE LANGUAGE OF MONTE CAFÉ (SÃO TOMÉ)
Determiner phrase; bare nouns; African Portuguese; Tonga Portuguese; Sociolinguistics.
This dissertation studies the variation in the use of the [+ definite] [+ specific] reference determiners in the determiner phrase (SD) in subject and direct object position in the Portuguese spoken by the bilingual community of Monte Café, in São Tomé (Africa). This Santomean community shares a series of characteristics with Afro-Brazilian Portuguese (LUCCHESI, BAXTER, RIBEIRO, 2009; NEVES, 2014, 2019), both sociolinguistic and historical: Portuguese colonization, colonial land owning distributions, forced migration and exploitation of populations of the African continent, and situations of linguistic contact and bilingualism. The dissertation studies the linguistic and extralinguistic factors that condition variation in the use of the definite reference determiner, which displays three variants: (i) definite article, as in the example “Quê dizê a técnica a técnica é dada memo por mim” ; (ii) zero determiner, as in “Guera veio assi memo, nossos preto é que ranjô isso”; and. (iii) the demonstrative, as in the example “Eu sempre nõ tive esse hábito quando trabalhava... matabichar depois trabalhar”. The research was conducted within the theoretical-methodological framework of Variationist Sociolinguistics (LABOV, 2008; GUY; ZILLES, 2007). The data were extracted from a corpus of 18 interviews stratified in three age groups, I (from 20 to 40 years old), II (from 41 to 60 years old), III (≥ 61 years old), and were processed with the GOLDVARB-X statistic programme (SANKOFF; TAGLIAMONTE; SMITH, 2005). The analysis assessed the influence of 11 independent variables, identifying as statistically significant 6 linguistic variables (type of possession, presence of plural marks, N accounting, familiarity of the reference, presence of other constituents in the SD) and two social variables (age and speaker's gender).