Extreme high frequency, segment dele5on and chunking: a study of emerging inﬂected pronouns in Brazilian Portuguese Ricardo Napoleão de Souza University of New Mexico SCIHS, University of California at Berkeley May 29, 2014 Outline 1.  Background informa5on on Brazilian Portuguese pronouns 2.  Word order and phone5c reduc5on 3.  Hypotheses 4.  Data collec5on and analysis 5.  Results 6.  Limita5ons and future steps 2 How does sound change impact grammar? In Brazilian Portuguese: Is sound change leading to the emergence of case dis=nc=ons in pronouns? 3 Background: the evolu5on of pronouns Vulgar La=n Early Modern Portuguese (before 16th Century) Contemporary Brazilian Portuguese eo tu ille / illa nos vos illes / illas eu tu ele / ela nós vós eles / elas eu você* ele / ela a gente / nós vocês* eles / elas * vossa mercê > vosmecê > você 4 Background: Subject and Object pronouns Modern Port. Contemp. BP Modern Port. Contemp. BP Subj você você Subj ela ela DirObj o / a você DirObj a ela IndObj lhe pra você IndObj lhe pra ela Gen seu de você Gen seu dela* * de + ela 5 Phone5c reduc5on In Portuguese, unstressed segments and syllables undergo various types of phone5c reduc5on •  Vowel dura5on reduc5on •  Vowel contrast neutraliza5on •  Monophthongiza5on •  De-‐nasaliza5on of vowels •  Coda consonant dele5on •  Cluster simpliﬁca5on Et cetera (cf. Macoso-‐Câmara 1973, Parkinson 1988, Bisol & Hora 1993, Cagliari 2007, Cristófaro-‐Silva & Guimarães 2009, Cantoni 2012, Napoleão de Souza 2012) 6 Sub DirObj IndObj Gen Sub DirObj IndObj Gen você você pra você de você ela ela pra ela dela se ose prose pse dose ɛə̯ ɛlə prɛlə pɛlə dɛlə 'ɛ.lə (she) vo'se (2s) S DO IO G se o'se pro'se do'se S DO IO G ɛə̯ 'ɛ.lə 'prɛ.lə 'dɛ.lə Through sound change, a new set of pronouns emerges 7 Hypotheses 1.  Once the innova5ve pronouns become part of the system, they are subject to regular processes of reduc5on and dele5on. As the use of preposi=on + pronoun increases, chunks of reduced preposi=ons (pr-‐ / d-‐) and reduced pronouns emerge throughout the en=re paradigm. >> type and string frequency cf. Givon 1979, Hopper and Traugoc 1993, Hopper & Thompson 2001, 8 Bybee 2001, 2007, 2010 Hypotheses 2. The degree of dele5on depends on the frequency of each pronominal form, which in turn depends on the syntac5c context. Phone=c reduc=ons aﬀect case forms diﬀerently >> based on frequency eﬀects (Sub > rest) >>> token frequency 9 Method •  36 spontaneous informal group interac5ons from the C-‐Oral Brasil Corpus of spoken Belo Horizonte Portuguese (Raso & Mello 2012) •  Text search •  Auditory and acous5c analysis •  1,905 tokens analyzed, classiﬁed as –  Sub, DirObj, IndObj, Gen •  preposi5onal direct objects classiﬁed diﬀerently from verbal objects (i.e., accusa5ve vs. da5ve) 10 Results (i) : Indirect Pronouns with pɾ-‐ 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Reduced form Extremely reduced form Full form 11 Results (ii) : Subject Pronouns 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Reduced form AlternaCve reduced form 12 Full form Results (iii) : Direct Object Pronouns 96 100 84 90 80 70 58 60 50 50 40 36 31 30 20 10 8 6 14 16 4 0 Reduced form Less reduced form Full form Historical form 13 Tenta5ve conclusions Ø All pronouns examined are subject to regular processes of reduc5on and dele5on Ø The syntac5c context determines the degree of reduc5on (esp. for 2S, 2P, ela, 3P) Ø The data suggest phone5c reduc5ons and chunking may be giving rise to a new set of pronouns Ø Frequency eﬀects can explain the diﬀerent forms 14 Limita5ons / Next steps •  Small corpus -‐ less than 300,000 words •  Didn’t control for frequency of the individual verbs or string frequency •  Preceding phone5c context (stressed vs unstressed) s5ll needs to be addressed •  Local speaking rate needs to be addressed •  Few object pronouns -‐ less frequent overall (cf. Hopper & Thompson 2001) •  Data refer to one dialect -‐ but there is evidence of similar phenomena in other BP dialects 15 Special thanks to: William Cros, Caroline Smith, Joan Bybee and Thaïs Cristófaro-‐Silva 16 BALL, MARTIN J. AND NICOLE MÜLLER. 2010. The Cel=c languages. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Routledge. BISOL, LEDA AND DERMEVAL DA HORA. 1993. Palatalização da oclusiva dental e fonologia lexical. Letras, Santa Maria, n. 5, p.25-‐40. BOERSMA, PAUL. 2001. Praat, a system for doing phone5cs by computer. Glot Interna=onal 5:9/10, 341-‐345. BYBEE, JOAN. 1985. Morphology. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. BYBEE, JOAN. 2010. Language, Usage and Cogni=on. Cambridge: Cambrige University Press. BYBEE, JOAN L, REVERE D. PERKINS AND WILLIAM PAGLIUCA. 1994. The evolu=on of grammar: tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. CAGLIARI, LUIZ CARLOS. 2007. Elementos de foné=ca do português brasileiro. 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Transi5vity, Clause Structure, and Argument Structure: Evidence from Conversa5on. In Joan L. Bybee and Paul J. Hopper, eds., Frequency and the Emergence of Linguis=c Structure, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 27-‐ 60. 17 Results (vi) -‐ Geni5ve pronouns 100 93 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 2 2 2 0 Reduced form Full form Historical f18 orm