The Formation of Plural in Nominal Items in Speech of Natives of Maranhão and Sergipe Based on Geolinguistics Data

Abstract

The variation in the formation of the plural in nominal items in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) is an example of what the grammatical tradition understands as a deviation from the standard norm, because its use is focused as being of a mandatory nature and, in general, it tends to be associated with the speech of more educated people and in a more monitored formal or colloquial register. From this viewpoint – that this phenomenon is much more a social than a linguistic requirement – this article seeks, based on the assumptions of Pluridimensional Dialectology and Sociolinguistics, to investigate the phenomenon of nominal agreement in the speech of natives of Maranhão and Sergipe, considering the localities that compose the network of points of the Linguistic Atlas of Maranhão (ALiMA), for the study of this State, and of the Linguistic Atlas of Brazil (ALiB), for Sergipe. With this representative sample, it was possible to make a comparative analysis of the obtained data and to observe the nominal agreement as a phenomenon with a visible tendency to vary in the formation of the plural of items ending in oral diphthongs, such as chapéu and degrau, largely conditioned by diastratic factors.