Linguistic parallelism (i.e., the tendency of similar forms to occur together within a stretch of discourse) has been shown to be very strong in many linguistic phenomena and in a vast number of languages. Examining the role of phrase-level parallelism on noun phrase number agreement, this article demonstrates that Puerto Rican Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese exhibit more similarities than differences with regard to this constraint. A detailed analysis of Brazilian Portuguese data is presented, and the results are compared with those found by Poplack (1980a) for Puerto Rican Spanish. Guy's (1981a) and Labov's (1994) hypothesis about missing zeroes in Brazilian Portuguese is also discussed. In conclusion, it is claimed that the phrase-level parallelism effect on noun phrase number agreement is embedded in a universal principle of linguistic use: parallel processing.

Subject/verb agreement and subject/predicate adjective agreement in spoken Brazilian Portuguese are subject to a parallel processing effect, such that marking leads to further marking and lack of marking leads to further lack of marking. For example, semantically plural verb tokens preceded by marked plural subjects in the same clause or other marked verb tokens with the same subject in the preceding discourse are more likely to be explicitly marked for plural than similar tokens preceded by unmarked subjects or verbs. This phenomenon is in direct contradiction to the principle of linguistic economy, since marking tends to occur precisely in those contexts in which it is most highly redundant and could therefore be discarded with no loss of information. Furthermore, the marking of successive plural tokens cannot be considered statistically independent events, since the outcome of previous marking decisions effects future marking. We propose that the parallel processing principle is a universal of language use.

Examination of three variable concord phenomena in spoken Portuguese of Rio de Janeiro (noun phrase, subject/predicate adjective, subject/verb) demonstrates that the most consistent and strongest variable constraint on the use of concord is the discourse level serial (or parallel processing) effect, that is, a preference for similar forms to co-occur in sections of discourse, even if this results in redundancy or lack of economy. Given the strength of this constraint, we separated the data into two subsets such that one contains only serial occurrences, where parallel processing can operate, whereas the other contains only isolated or first occurrences, where there is no preceding form to trigger the parallel effect. In the serial set, the parallel effect is so strong that other nonsocial constraints are not selected. External forces, such as the normative pressure of the school system toward fully redundant marking, have no significant effect on the serial tokens, although education does correlate with increased use of concord in isolated/first tokens. Thus, in the serial context the linguistic system is so highly constrained that external, and even internal, influences are blocked. We conclude that strong constraints should be identified, and that data in which they are operative should be analyzed separately from data in which they are not present in order to understand the interplay of the diverse forces in the linguistic system.

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Resumo Este artigo propõe uma reflexão sobre o uso de datas relativas a períodos de pro-dução de peças de louça importadas, re-cu pe ra da s em sít io s hi st ór ic os oi to-centistas, situados no Município de Porto Alegre (RS). Tecendo considerações so-bre presenças e ausências de duas deco-rações presentes em peças de faiança fina-a carimbada e o Padrão Trigal-prove-nientes de lixeiras coletivas e de unidades domésticas, sugerimos que, para o esta-belecime nt o dos per íod os de fo rm a-ção mais intensa dos depósitos de lixo, informações relativas aos principais cen-tros produto res não deveriam ser prio-rizadas. Abordar aspectos sobre o consu-mo de artigos exige um enfoque dirigido a especificidades dos contextos nacional, regional e local. Palavras chaves: faiança fina, datações, consumo no século XIX.