dc.description.abstract | Considering the theoretical methodological presuppositions of Variationist Sociolinguistics (WEINREICH, LABOV, HERZOG, [1968] 2006) and Historical Sociolinguistics (CONDE SILVESTRE, 2007), we describe and analyze the process of variation/change involving pronominal forms of second person of the singular (P2), in the position of verbal complement, in the accusative, dative and oblique functions, in seven sets of personal letters written by people from Rio Grande do Norte(RN) along thethe 20th century. We present a quantitative / qualitative analysis with the objective of identifying which linguistic and / or extralinguistic factors influence the process of change observed in the pronominal paradigma in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). We are based on previous studies about the pronominal system in BP, wich register the productivity of pronominal forms te, lhe, você, o/a, contigo, prep.+ ti, prep.+ você, ø, in the position of verbal complemente. These studies attesd the following situationa lso showed a delineation of the morphosyntactic environments favorable to the use of the forms associated to você, these being more recurrent in contexts with imperative verbal forms, the explicit subjects and prepositional complements pronouns. The results got in this thesis confirm, partially, the statements defended by the previous studies: i) significant productivity of the pronominal forms 'te / lhe' the first being associated with the tu and the second with você; ii) expressive use of the forms associated with the innovative pronoun você, especially in constructions of the type: Suj + V + OD + OI, Suj + V + OI, in the constructions with prepositional complements; iii) incidences of use of the forms of complement associated to você in contexts with less degree of formality; iv) significant preference for constructions with a explicit lexically object; v) ratification of the prognosis already presented by Moura (2013) regarding the preference forms associated with você, in the personal letters of RN, since the first decades of the 20th century (1916). The results of this thesis show that the forms of complement associated with you, as well as the constructions with the object explicit have almost majority preference in the letters of RN. | |