Grammatical change and hindcast model statistics – A comparison between Medieval French and Brazilian Portuguese
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36505/ExLing-2016/07/0039/000298Keywords:
Hindcast statistical model, grammatical change, pro-drop parameter, Brazilian Portuguese, Medieval FrenchAbstract
This paper presents a methodology to analyse the ongoing linguistic change in Brazilian Portuguese [BP] as regards the pro-drop parameter. I propose to apply a hindcast statistical regression model to a sample of data from Medieval French [MF], whose outcome is the obligatory subject use in Modern French and to compare to a sample from BP. The results suggest that the change in such languages contrasts and is related to different reasons. While the change in MF appears to have uniformly gone toward non-pro-drop parameter, the BP change seems a by-product of semantic preference of null subjects to corefer to non-animated and non-specific antecedents.
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Copyright (c) 2016 Eduardo Correa Soares (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
