Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-cphqk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-11T08:49:21.735Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The serial effect on internal and external variables

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Maria Marta Pereira Scherre  and
Anthony J. Naro
Maria Marta Pereira Scherre
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Anthony J. Naro
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Examination of three variable concord phenomena in spoken Portuguese of Rio de Janeiro (noun phrase, subject/predicate adjective, subject/verb) demonstrates that the most consistent and strongest variable constraint on the use of concord is the discourse level serial (or parallel processing) effect, that is, a preference for similar forms to co-occur in sections of discourse, even if this results in redundancy or lack of economy. Given the strength of this constraint, we separated the data into two subsets such that one contains only serial occurrences, where parallel processing can operate, whereas the other contains only isolated or first occurrences, where there is no preceding form to trigger the parallel effect. In the serial set, the parallel effect is so strong that other nonsocial constraints are not selected. External forces, such as the normative pressure of the school system toward fully redundant marking, have no significant effect on the serial tokens, although education does correlate with increased use of concord in isolated/first tokens. Thus, in the serial context the linguistic system is so highly constrained that external, and even internal, influences are blocked. We conclude that strong constraints should be identified, and that data in which they are operative should be analyzed separately from data in which they are not present in order to understand the interplay of the diverse forces in the linguistic system.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , March 1992 , pp. 1 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Gryner, Helena. (1990). A variação de tempo-modo e conexão nas orações condicionais em português. Ph.D. dissertation, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.Google Scholar
Mollica, M. Cecilia. (1989). Queísmo e dequeísmo no português do Brasil. Ph.D. dissertation, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.Google Scholar
Mollica, M. Cecilia. (1991). Processing and morpho-semantic effects in complementation in Brazilian Portuguese. Language Variation and Change 3(3):265–274.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Naro, Anthony J. (1981). The social and structural dimensions of a syntactic change. Language 57(1):63–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Naro, Anthony J., et al. (1986). Relatório final de pesquisa: Projeto “Subsídios do Projeto ‘Censo’ à Educação.” Rio de Janeiro: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.Google Scholar
Omena, Nelize Pires de. (1978). Pronome pessoal de terceira pessoa: Suas formas variantes em função acusativa. M.A. thesis, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro.Google Scholar
Pintzuk, Susan. (1988). VARBRUL programs. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana. (1980a). Deletion and disambiguation in Puerto Rican Spanish. Language 56(2):371–385.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poplack, Shana. (1980b). The notion of the plural in Puerto Rico Spanish: Competing constraints on /s/ deletion. In Labov, William (ed.), Locating language in time and space. New York: Academic. 55–67.Google Scholar
Rousseau, Pascale & Sankoff, David. (1978). Advances in variable rule methodology. In Sankoff, David (ed.), Linguistic variation: Models and methods. New York: Academic. 57–68.Google Scholar
Sankoff, David. (1988). Variable rules. In Ammon, Ulrich, Dittmar, Norbert & Mattheir, Klaus J. (eds.), Sociolinguistics. New York: Walter de Gruyter. 984–987.Google Scholar
Sankoff, David & Laberge, Suzanne. (1978). Statistical dependence among successive occurrences of a variable in discourse. In Sankoff, David (ed.), Linguistic variation: Models and methods. New York: Academic. 119–126.Google Scholar
Scherre, Maria Marta Pereira. (1988). Reanálise da concordância nominal em português. Ph.D. dissertation, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.Google Scholar
Scherre, Maria Marta Pereira. (1989). A concordância de número nos predicatives e nos particípios passivos: Mais um caso de paralelismo formal. Anais do XXXVI Seminário de Lingüística do Grupo de Estudos Lingüísticos do Estado de São Paulo. 576–585.Google Scholar
Scherre, Maria Marta Pereira & Naro, Anthony J. (1991). Marking in discourse: “Birds of a feather.” Language Variation and Change 3(1):23–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scherre, Maria Marta Pereira & Naro, Anthony J. (in press). Duas dimensōes do paralelismo formal no português popular do Brasil. To appear in DELTA. São Paulo: EDUC.Google Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah. (1981). Tense variation in narrative. Language 57(1):45–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiner, Judith & Labov, William. (1983). Constraints on the agentless passive. Journal of Linguistics 19:29–58. (Originally presented at the Linguistic Society of America Summer Meeting, Honolulu, 1977.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar