Alomorfia de plural no português de Salvador: uma análise preliminar de dados do Atlas Linguístico do Brasil (ALiB)

Abstract

Taking into account the fact that there is an oscillation in the choice of which morph should be used for the plural signaling in Brazilian Portuguese, there are still strategies of partial use or absence of this marking by speakers in varied linguistic and social contexts. In this article, we seek to understand how the plural in Salvador establishes from the interface between the morphological, phonological and phonetic levels, through a theoretical and methodological analysis of Sociolinguistics (WEINREICH; LABOV; HERZOG, 2006 [1968]). For this preliminary work, we use only the qualitative approach of percentages of occurrence of plural allomorphy. For this, it was necessary to hear interviews from eight informants from Salvador conducted between 2003 and 2007, provided by the Linguistic Atlas of Brazil (CARDOSO et al., 2014). As a methodological cutout, we considered only thirteen lexis with the possible occurrences of number allomorphy found in the Phonetic-Phonological Questionnaire (QFF, question 76: reais) and the Morphosyntatic Questionnaire (QMS, section “number”: anéis, aventais, pães, mãos, leões, degraus, chapéus, anzóis, olhos, ovos, pincéis, bolsos (COMITÊ NACIONAL, 2001). The results indicate that: i) poorly educated people, aged 50 to 65 and women (by overcorrection in this case) do more irregular plural; ii) the equivalence of final word sounds (such as -L > -U), from the vocalization of /l/, causes some irregular plurals; iii) among the plural types, the metaphonic, being a strategy that would require a triple marking (syntactic, phonetic and morphological), is naturally subject to the reduction of this marking to only one or two of these levels; iv) certain lexis favor the irregular plural or its non-marking, perhaps because they are little used in everyday life or because of poor phonic salience.