Comentários sobre a ordem sujeito-verbo em anúncios de jornais do Brasil oitocentista

Abstract

This paper has given a brief look at some aspects of the subject’s placement in the clause of the Portuguese language, employed in the 19th century in Brazil. The analysis has been developed from a selection of eighteenth-century newspaper ads, compiled in the work “Os Preços Eram Commodos... Anúncios de Jornais Brasileiros Século XIX” (GUEDES; BERLINCK, 2000). The data observed were opposed to studies on syntactic order in Portuguese (DIAS, 1959; CÂMARA JÚNIOR, 1975; PONTES, 1987). From a particularly quantitative perspective, it has been possible to observe that in 19th century announcements the most favored order was the unmarked one, that is, with the subject before the verb (60%). However, we have still identified a high percentage (40%) of occurrences of the marked placement, in which the subject is placed after the verb.The elevation of this last data occurred, in part, due to the discursive genre, which favors, for example, the use of synthetic passives clauses. Finally, we have observed that the model of subject positioning was already defined in the 19th century.