The pathways of the Pernambucano treatment subsystem: the relationships in love letters of the 50's in two varieties

Abstract

The present study aims to present the mapping of the pathways taken by the Pernambuco treatment subsystem for the second person of the singular pronoun (VOCÊ_TU), in the 20^th century. To achieve this aim, we intend to analyze the frequency of use of the pronouns TU and VOCÊ variant treatment forms, occupying the syntactic subject position in 72 letters of the love subgenre written in two locations in the state of Pernambuco, the metropolitan region of Recife and the region of Alto Sertão of Pajeú. The  material gathered comprises samples from Recife area for the years 1949 to 1950 and from Alto Sertão of Pajeú area from 1956 to 1958.We started with the paths of socio-historical linguistics of Brazilian Portuguese (MATTOS & SILVA, 2004), anchored in the theoretical-methodological Variationist Sociolinguistics perspective (LABOV, 2008 [1972]), associated with the Discursive Traditions model (KABATEK, 2008). We consider the following groups of intra and extra-linguistic factors to obtain data from Recife area and from the Alto Sertão of Pajeú area: I. concrete implementation of forms of treatment (the filling or not filling in the subject position); II. exclusivity and non-exclusivity of pronouns in the same letter (the use of the same pronoun form or alternative use of forms in the subject position); III. gender; and finally, IV. pattern of morphosyntactic organization (2^rd or 3^rd position agreement). Therefore, we obtained the following main results: a) greater productivity of VOCÊ over TU in Recife area; b) proportional distribution among the variant forms in letters of the Alto Sertão of Pajeú area; c) preference for the use of pronouns as concrete forms filled in both locations; and d) three agreement paradigms for the use of TU and VOCÊ in a syntactic subject position in both varieties.