Análise sociofuncionalista da variação de concordância verbal em construções de voz passiva sintética em textos jornalísticos cearenses

Abstract

Our work investigate how the variable fulfillment of verbal concord in synthetic passive voice constructions, alternating between the presence and absence of explicit mark of plural in the third person of verb forms, is presented in the current linguistic context of Ceará, specifically in two local newspapers: O Povo and Diário do Nordeste. In order to reach this goal, we selected 240 editions focusing on three textual genres: editorial, opinion article, and news from January to December, 2016. A number of 121 data concerning the variation of verbal concord with the synthetic passive voice construction was selected and submitted to the statistical computer program Goldvarb X which generated frequencies and relative weight that served as basis to the description and data analysis. The program pointed out that the absence of the explicit mark of the plural in the verb with the synthetic passive voice is subject to two groups of factors: one linguistic, verbal form; and the other extralinguistic, textual genre. However, the number of data in which the verb presents explicit mark of plural (59.5%) claimed to be more representative than the amount of data in which the verb is not present in the explicit mark of plural (40.5%). In order to develop this research, we used as theoretical-methodological basis the Sociolinguistic Variation (LABOV, 2008), attached to the functionalist principles, notably to the Markedness Principle (GIVÓN, 1995) and the Principle of Expressiveness (DU BOIS & VOTRE, 2012). Besides the possible change towards the indetermination due to the use of the synthetic passive voice, we conclude that as for the group verbal form the periphrastic and infinitive forms, especially with this type of construction. The aforementioned forms tend to be fulfilled without the presence of the plural morpheme as a device to reduce or set aside the codification effort and motivated in terms of expressiveness and communicative accuracy. As far as the extralinguistic group textual genre is concerned, there is a tendency that more marked forms occur in contexts that are more marked and less marked forms occur in contexts that are less marked as well. In summary, more marked verbal forms in synthetic passive voice – with the presence of a plural morpheme - tend to appear in contexts that are more marked such as in textual genre editorial whereas less marked verbal forms – absence of plural morpheme – tend to occur in contexts that are less marked such as in the news textual genre.