Ter/haver existenciais na fala alagoana: variação estável ou mudança em progresso?

Abstract

In this research, we trace the sociolinguistic profile of the speakers from the state of Alagoas concerning the variation of the verbs "ter" and "haver" in existential constructions, in order to analyse how that variation occurs and verify if the alternance of those verbs, in the alagoana speech, reflects either a process of stable variation or a change in progress. For the development of this work, we appeal to the Theory of Linguistics Variation (LABOV, 2008[1972]) which deals the variation and linguistics change and includes the variable use of the language in its social context. In this way, after the delimitation of the dependent variable and of the independent variables selected as potentially relevant in the variation under analysis, namely, animacity of the internal argument, nature of the internal argument, verbal tense, gender, age and scholarity, we stratify our sample and we did the gathering and transcription of data, as well as, the analysis and codification of all existential constructions formed with the verbs present in the corpus. For the quantitative analysis, we use the software VARBRUL, which delimited the variables statically nonsignificant and the variables statically significant in variation under study, showing not only that there is variation “ter” and “haver” existentials in the community studied and that the uses of “ter” existential is greater than the uses of “haver” existential, as well as that such variation is conditionated by the factor groups scholarity, verbal tense, age and nature of internal argument, leading us to argue that, in the alagoana speech, such variation reflects a process of change in cours in the direction of “ter” existential.