Abstract

HERDEIRO, Ana João  and  BARBOSA, Pilar. ‘Queísmo' in the speech of Braga: a sociolinguistics study. Diacrítica [online]. 2015, vol.29, n.1, pp.327-351. ISSN 0807-8967.

In this study, we investigate which factors can influence the phenomenon of queísmo, i.e., the omission of the preposition before oblique finite complements, in 44 interviews taken from the Sociolinguistic Profile of the Speech of Braga, a corpus of spoken contemporary Portuguese. The study consists in a multifactorial analysis involving three linguistic variables - category of the selecting predicate, preposition and subtype of verb - and two extralinguistic variables - age and level of education of the speakers. Our results show that queísmo is indeed the preferred option. Choice of preposition is the most significant variable, with high rates of queísmo for purely grammatical prepositions such as de and em. The explanatory account given for this phenomenon is based on the assumption that the prepositions in question are Case markers. Finite clausal complements, unlike noun phrases, do not need Case and this is why they do not require the presence of the preposition.

Keywords : queísmo; European Portuguese; sociolinguistics variation; finite oblique clausal complements; case theory.

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