Brazilian Portuguese Grammar

by Bruno Oliveira Maroneze

The morphology and syntax of both varieties of Portuguese differ in many aspects. This small text describes some of the most important differences between them. First, however, an important remark must be done: most of EP characteristics are found in BP written texts, because the BP normative grammar is built from EP spoken language.
 

1. Nominal inflection

BP inflection system is identical to EP, but there is a syntactic peculiarity: in informal situations, only the determiner of the noun phrase is pluralized. In EP, this is a dialectal phenomenon.
 

EP:	os livros usados the used books (lit. "the (masc. pl.) books used (pl.)")
BP (inf.):	os livro usado the used books (lit. "the (masc. pl.) book used (sg.)")

 
Sometimes, the plural is marked on the possessive, even if an article precedes it. This phenomenon is not very understood yet:
 

EP:	os meus livros my books ("the (masc. pl.) my (masc. pl.) books")
BP (inf.):	o meus livro my books ("the (masc. sg.) my (masc. pl.) books")

 
 
2. Verbal inflection

EP opposes /a/ and // in first person plural of first conjugation verbs:

• EP:  cant[]mos we sing (present tense) vs. cant[a]mos we sang (“perfect preterite” tense).

BP does not make this distinction, pronouncing both with []. In some popular varieties, there is a (socially disregarded) distinction between present and perfect preterite tense somewhat similar to this one above:

• BP (pop.): cantamos we sing vs.   cantemo we sang.

• cantarei  I will sing

vou cantar lit. ‘I go to sing’

The conditional forms also have this double possibility:

• cantaria I would sing

ia cantar lit. I went to sing

• Se eu pudesse ser menino / eu roubava essa rosa. (1)

If I could be a boy, I would steal that rose.
(lit. If I could be boy I stole (imp. pret.) that  rose).

• BP: estou comendo I am eating
• EP: estou a comer lit. I am to eat.

• EP: Há gente nesta casa. There are people in this house.
• BP: Tem gente nesta casa. lit. Have people in this house.

3. Pronouns

There are very important differences between BP and EP in the usage of pronouns.

The relative pronoun cujo ‘whose’ (from Latin cujus) is used only in EP (and sometimes in written BP). Instead, BP uses a different form of relativization:
 

EP:	O autor cujo livro eu li.  The author whose book I read. ("The author whose book I read.")
BP:	O autor que eu li o  livro dele. ("The author that I read the book of-him.")

 
This different form is also used in other relative constructions:
 

EP:	O menino com quem eu falei. The boy with whom I talked. ("The boy whom I talked with.")
BP:	O menino que eu falei com ele. ("The boy that I talked with  him.")

 
This was the subject of a very important study by Fernando Tarallo (1983).
 

3.1. Personal pronouns and the verbal paradigm

BP doesn’t know the second person plural pronoun vós ‘you’ pl., and the second person singular pronoun tu ‘you’ sg. is used only in some regions. Instead, BP uses the pronouns você (sg.) and vocês (pl.), which come from the old treatment form Vossa Mercê ‘your mercy’, originally a formal treatment (in EP, this form has yet the original sense). Compare with Spanish usted(es) and Catalan Vostè(des), which have the same etymology. BP verbal paradigm, then, is reduced to four (or three, depending on the tense) person forms:
 

European Portuguese	Brazilian Portuguese
Eu canto Tu cantas Ele(a) canta Nós cantamos Vós cantais Eles(as) cantam	Eu canto Você canta Ele(a) canta Nós cantamos Vocês cantam Eles(as) cantam	I sing You sing etc.

 
The first person plural pronoun is being substituted by the expression a gente ‘the people’, in a way similar to the French pronoun “on”; so, the first person plural form becomes identical to the third person singular. My study, “A Realização do Sujeito no Português Brasileiro”, deals with some implications of this new BP paradigm.
 

3.2. Possessive and demonstrative adjectives/pronouns

The use of the form você(s) made important changes on the use of possessives. First, the form vosso(s) / vossa(s) (which corresponds to vós) is not used; second, there is a confusion between the forms teu(s) / tua(s) (corresponding to the old pronoun tu) and the forms seu(s) / sua(s) (third person forms, and also corresponding to the pronoun você(s)):
 

BP:	teu livro your book
	seu livro your book or his / her book

This confusion forces the use of the forms dele(s) / dela(s) ‘of him’, ‘of her’, ‘of them’ to distinguish:
 

BP:

teu livro seu livro o livro dele o livro dela o livro deles o livro delas

your book your book or his / her book his book (lit. ‘the book of him’) her book their (masc.) book their (fem.) book

 
The demonstrative system also became reduced, but probably not because of the use of você(s); maybe for phonological reasons:
 

EP:	este / esta / isto	esse / essa / isso	aquele / aquela / aquilo(2)
	this	that (near you)	that (near him / her / them)
BP:	esse / essa / isso	aquele / aquela / aquilo
		(or este / esta / isto, indistinctively)

As one can see, in BP there is no distinction between este and esse, except in written texts.
 

3.3. Position of clitics

These are some of the most important differences between BP and EP, and have been very seriously studied.

The position of object clitics in EP is largely conservative, corresponding to an early stage of Romance languages; BP, on the other hand, has innovated accompanying the changes in the other Romance languages.

While in EP the clitics are mainly enclitic, in BP (and in other Romance languages) proclisis is preferred:

• EP: Ela viu-me. She saw me.
• BP: Ela me viu.
• Fr.: Elle m’a vu.
• It.: Lei m’ha veduto.
• Sp.: Ella me ha visto.

• EP: Deram-me este livro. Someone gave me this book.

EP: * Me deram este livro.
• BP: Me deram este livro.

• EP: Dê-me um cigarro. Give me a cigarette.
• BP: Me dá um cigarro.(3)

• EP: Visitei-o ontem. I visited him yesterday.
• BP: Visitei ele ontem.

• I. The clitic is proclitic, following the general tendency in BP:

O visitei ontem.

• II. The first vowel of the phonological word (i. e., the clitic) undergoes apheresis, a common phenomenon in BP (compare with imagina => magina imagine!):

[o] Visitei ontem.

• III. The nominative pronoun must be used to substitute the clitic. This is sometimes extended to other persons:

Olha eu instead of Me olha (‘Look at me!’), but this is socially disregarded.

Bibliographical References

• CÂMARA Jr., Joaquim Mattoso (1957) Ele como acusativo no português do Brasil. In: FGV. Dispersos. Rio de Janeiro, 1972, p. 47-53.
• ___. (1972) História e estrutura da língua portuguesa. Rio de Janeiro: Padrão.
• CASTILHO, Ataliba T. de (1999) O Português do Brasil. In: ILARI, Rodolfo. Lingüística Românica. São Paulo: Ática.
• TEYSSIER, Paul (1997) História da língua portuguesa. São Paulo: Martins Fontes.
• TARALLO, Fernando (1983) Relativization strategies in Brazilian Portuguese. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. Doctoral Thesis.
• ___. (1994) Tempos Lingüísticos: itinerário histórico da língua portuguesa. São Paulo: Ática.

• §1. Verses from the song “Modinha”, by the Brazilian composer Sérgio Bittencourt. Go back =>
• §2. The three forms correspond, respectively, to the masculine, feminine and neuter genders; in the demonstrative, the Latin neuter has survived; isto means roughly ‘this thing’. =>
• §3. This example was extracted from a verse by Oswald de Andrade. Here is the complete poem:
 
Pronominais

Dê-me um cigarro
Diz a gramática
Do professor e do aluno
E do mulato sabido
Mas o bom negro e o bom branco
Da Nação Brasileira
Dizem todos os dias
Deixa disso camarada
Me dá um cigarro.
 

Go back =>

© 2001  Written for Orbis Latinus by Bruno Oliveira Maroneze.