The use of nominal gender agreement in the speech of the cacerense community in the Upper Pantanal of Mato Grosso

Abstract

This article presents a compilation of data presented in Karim's research (2004; 2012), which investigated variation in nominal gender agreement in the speech of the community of Cáceres, in the Alto Pantanal of Mato Grosso. This compilation of data, in this new article, is justified by the importance of highlighting the coexistence of the use of the grammatical standard, according to the norms of normative grammar and the Cáceres standard, with the absence of gender agreement that manifests itself in the speech of the Cáceres community in different situations. Based on interviews with 36 native speakers, the sociolinguistic analysis identified factors that condition this variation, such as age, schooling and communicative situation. The data indicates that the use of the grammatical pattern in the interviewees' speech is predominant among young people (85%) and individuals with higher education (90%), suggesting a strong influence of schooling and contact with formal norms. On the other hand, the use of the Cacerense standard, characterized by variation in gender agreement, is more frequent among speakers over 50 (55%) and with less schooling (50%), reflecting orality and local cultural identity. The results show a gradual process of linguistic change, in which the standard norm gains ground without completely eliminating regional variants. These results also show how the relationship between socio-economic and cultural factors creates conditions for the conservation of peculiar uses and old features of the Portuguese language brought by the region's colonizers. The preservation of these traits can be explained by the long period of isolation that the Cáceres region has experienced in relation to Brazil's major urban centers.