The order of pronominal clitics in complex verbals: norms of use in readerletters

Abstract

This paper focuses on pronominal order in verbal periphrases, taking into consideration data from a research developed by Peterson (2010) in which clitic pronouns produced by newspaper readers from Rio de Janeiro city have been analysed. Developed within the framework of Labovian Sociolinguistics, the study demonstrates that although the readers’ correspondences present the alternant form V1 cl V2 (pode me dizer), highly productive and natural in Brazilian Portuguese, different uses can be observed in relation to proximity or distance to idealized linguistic norms which are proposed by prescriptive manuals. Not only linguistic motivations, but also extralinguistic restrictions (regarding mainly newspapers’ characteristics) have been associated to the pronominal order.