Variable Use Of Anaphoric Forms In Accusative

Abstract

Our study is the result of a Labovian sociolinguistic research whose object of study consists of the variable use of anaphoric forms in accusative as clitics, personal pronouns and null objects. We have mainly based our study on Camara Júnior (2004), Cyrino (1993, 1997. 2000), Duarte (1989) and Oliveira (2007). The methodology used for the description and analysis of the data is based on Quantitative Sociolinguistics (LABOV, 2008 [1972]). The sample investigated in this work consists of written texts produced by students from the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th grades, from four public schools in Florianópolis, Santa Catarina. The independent internal variables include semantic, morphosyntactic and syntactic aspects, and the independent external variables are: ‘sex’, ‘age’ and ‘schooling’. The results revealed that the “reto” pronoun and the null object were the students’ most frequently used variants, and the “oblíquo” pronoun appeared as a rarely used option, mainly conditioned by the antecedent ‘animacy’ feature.