Issues on the history of Portuguese in and of Brazil

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is twofold: (i) primarily, to raise questions that will contribute to the discussion of the origins of the Brazilian variety of the Portuguese language and (ii) secondarily, to focus on 3rd person plural agreement in Brazilian Portuguese (os meninos estud am/ os meninos estud aØ – “the boys study”), taking into account the hypotheses that Brazilian Portuguese (BP) may have its roots in European Portuguese (EP) or may be the effect of intense linguistic contact, by irregular linguistic transmission. The position argued is that there is not only one history, but rather many histories of Brazilian Portuguese and it is necessary to relate linguistic to social data and observe demographic characteristics from place to place.