Gramática, competição e padrões de variação: casos com ter/haver e de/em no português brasileiro

Resumo

I analyze two instances of linguistic variation in Brazilian Portuguese:the occurrence of ter ‘to have’ or haver ‘there is/are’ in existentialconstructions, and the use of de ‘of’ or em ‘in’ in prepositional phraseswith adjectival function. Exploring Kato’s (2005) proposal, I arguethat ter/haver variation is a reflection of the competition betweentwo grammars, with sociolinguistic motivations, while de/emvariation results from morphosyntatic procedures within an onlygrammar.