The Use Of mais In The Rural Afro-Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

This article deals with the variation MORE ~ AND in the context of coordination of elements in the sentence. It seeks to identify the linguistic contexts that favor the use of one variant or another, as well as to check the trajectory of variant MAIS in afrodescendant rural dialect considering linguistic and social factors along the lines of Sociolinguistics. In this research it was considered that the variation MORE ~ AND is a result of contact between languages that occurred in Brazil during the colonization period, thus, we selected two Afro-descent rural communities – Helvecia and Cinzento - located in the state of Bahia. The results show that the use of MAIS is favored in the community of Helvecia, among adults and elderly speakers, among illiterates and those who never left their communities.