Sarić, Daliborka.
(2005).
Creole features of Brazilian Portuguese.
Suvremena lingvistika, 59-60(1-2).
pp. 103-125.
ISSN 1847-117X
Abstract
A non-standard variety of Brazilian Portuguese, usually called Popular Brazilian Portuguese,
displays various grammatical structures which are claimed by some linguists to be traces of prior
creolization or some kind of partially broken transmission. Through the supposed decreolization
process, Popular Brazilian Portuguese came to a current post-creole (semi-creole) stage. Such creole-like features are, for exemple, the loss of verb person-number inflection which may be reduced
to a single form, the lack of distinctive case-marking on subject and object pronouns, number
marking only on the first element of the noun phrase, double negation, etc. The most concentrated
amount of these restructurings is found in the rural dialects, such as Helvecian which is usually
classified as a true creole, and in the vernaculars of lower social classes in the case of urban
speech. The linguists who question these proposals sometimes try to compare the Brazilian to the
European variety and claim to have identified the same grammatical structures in the European
Portuguese. I tried to show that a closer examination of the linguistic data they present shows
that there are no such similarities in the two varieties. Although there is no clear historical nor
linguistic evidence to prove the creolization hypothesis, it still cannot be disproved by comparing
modern European and Brazilian Portuguese.
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