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The Social and Structural Dimensions of a Syntactic Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Anthony J. Naro
Anthony J. Naro*
Affiliation:
Pontifícia Universidade Católica and Universidade Federal, Rio de Janeiro
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Abstract

This paper proposes a model of syntactic change based on a quantitative study of the rule of subject/verb agreement in spoken Brazilian Portuguese. Among speakers of the lower socio-economic levels, this rule is currently undergoing a process of elimination from the grammar. The model postulates that syntactic change starts at a point where surface differentiation between the old and new systems is zero (or nearly so); later it spreads throughout the language in inverse proportion to the degree of saliency of the surface differences between these systems in each particular environment. Thus ‘natural’ clusters of linguistic features arise only gradually.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , March 1981, pp. 63 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by Linguistic Society of America

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