O uso do pronome 'eles' como recurso de indeterminação do sujeito

Abstract

The necessity of describing a spoken Brazilian grammar has led brazilian linguistics to study judiciously a wide variety of phenomenona in our language, one of them, the indetermination of subject. The present study investigates one of the resources of indetermination: the use of the third person in the masculine plural, in its full and zero realizations.The theorical basis which supported the research relies fundamentally on the Variation Theory proposed by Labov (1972), as well on the conception of theory of linguistic change developed, at first, by Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (1968) and Labov (1994, 2001). For the quantitative analyses it has been used the Goldvarb 2001 version organized by Robinson, Lawrence & Tagliamonte (2001). The research hereupon developed shows that the variable analysed they and zero, before plural verb, is condicionated by age range, schooling levels, subject reference [±determined], type of the sentence, and the NP antecedet reference. It could be possible to identify four levels of indetermination to they pronoun based on the last factor: locative > coletive > generic > indefinite.