Variação e funcionalidade no uso de pronomes de 2ª pessoa do singular no português carioca

Résumé

Previous variationist analysis of subject pronoun expression inlanguages like Portuguese and Spanish provide arguments for theso-called functional compensation hypothesis: pronouns tend tobe used whenever they are needed for the felicitous flow ofcommunication. On the other hand, some researchers have shownthe opposite effect of the parallel processing principle: markingtends to attract more marking, in a redundant way. This articlediscusses both hypotheses, applied to the use of the second personsubject pronoun, bringing evidence from natural conversation inPortuguese as spoken in Rio de Janeiro. The data were collectedin 1989/1990.