The competition ter, haver and existir in the scholar written

Abstract

Considering that, in Brazilian Portuguese, “ter” is the existential verb selected by the speech, but in the written, “haver” is the canonical existential verb and “existir”, due its character of noun existential verb and hence trend to present a low and constant percentual use, we describe and analyze the existential constructions build with the verbs “ter”, “haver” and “existir” in the written of Elementary, High School and College students in the city of Maceió/AL. In order to do that, we follow the theoretical and methodological basis of the Theory of Variation and Change (WEINREICH; LABOV; HERZOG, 2006; LABOV 2008), joint with linguistic studies in the Brazilian Portuguese (AVELAR, 2006a; MARINS, 2013; VITÓRIO, 2014) and we use, for the statistical analysis of data, the software GOLDVARB X. According with the results, we verify that there is a tight competition between “ter” and “haver” and a low frequency of “existir”, and this variation is conditioned by the groups of factors semantic trace of the internal argument, scholarity and the textual production theme, with the verb “ter” being more often used when the internal argument presents the trace [+ concrete], in the written of less educated and when the textual production theme is related with the personal experience of the students.