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Estudos de Lingüística Galega, 14 (2022). ISSN: 1989-578X
https://doi.org/10.15304/elg.14.8265
Pescuda
The system of pronouns of address in Madeira
O sistema dos pronomes de tratamento em Madeira
Víctor Lara Bermejo1,a
1 UCA / CELGA-ILTEC Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal
aviktoresc@hotmail.com
Received: 17/02/2022; Accepted: 25/04/2022
Abstract
The system of forms and pronouns of address in European Portuguese presents great variation
throughout the entire country. Although a tripartite and a bipartite paradigm exists in singular and
plural, respectively, the dialect reality provides a more complex system that depends on geo and socio-
linguistic factors. Despite the most recent studies on this phenomenon, there is little information about
the actual usage of pronouns of address in the archipelagos. In this paper, I aim to pinpoint the current
paradigm of pronouns of address in Madeira, by also establishing its geolinguistic, sociolinguistic,
pragmatic and grammatical constraints, thanks to a quantitative corpus stemming from
The main results show the elimination of vós as plural, the extension of vocês and its 3pl
agreement pattern, as well as various pragmatic changes in progress regarding the conception of
family and the spread of pragmatic solidarity.
Keywords: European Portuguese; Madeira; pronouns of address; dialectology; politeness.
Resumo
O sistema de formas de tratamento em europeu apresenta uma grande por
todo o Embora exista um paradigna tripartito em singular e um bipartito em plural, a realidade
dialetal fornece um sistema mais complexo que depende de fatores e
Apesar dos estudos mais recentes sobre este carecemos de acerca do uso real
dos ponomes de tratamento nos Neste artigo, pretendo estabelecer o paradigma atual de
pronomes de tratamento na Madeira, determinando igualmente as
e gramaticais, graças a um corpus quantitativo que de
levantamento de dados. Os resultados mostram a de vós plural, a de vocês e a
de 3pl, de mudanças em curso que afetam a da
e a da solidariedade
Palavras-chave: europeu; Madeira; pronomes de tratamento; dialetologia; cortesia.
This is an open access arcle distributed under the terms of the Creave Commons Aribuon-
NonCommercial-NoDerivaves 4.0 Internaonal (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License (BY-NC-ND 4.0)
SUMMARY
1. The system of continental Portugal.
2. The system of Madeira
3. Theoretical framework, corpus and methodology
4. Data
5. Analysis
5.1. Geolinguistics
5.2. Sociolinguistics.
5.3. Pragmatics
5.3.1. The usage of vós
5.3.2. Address within the family.
5.3.3. The usage of você and null subject + 3sg.
5.3.4. Tendency towards solidarity.
5.4. Grammatical behaviour.
5.4.1. Objects and oblique: stressed pronouns, dative and the prepositional
phrase.
5.4.2. Extension of the 3pl anchoring vocês.
5.4.3. The loss of vós.
6. Conclusions.
SUMÁRIO
1. O sistema de Portugal continental.
2. O sistema da Madeira.
3. Marco corpus e metodologia.
4. Dados
5.
5.1.
5.2.
5.3.
5.3.1. O uso de vós.
5.3.2. Tratamento na
5.3.3. O uso de você e o sujeito nulo + 3sg.
5.3.4. solidariedade.
5.4. Comportamento gramatical.
5.4.1. Objetos e pronomes dativos e sintagmas
preposicionais.
5.4.2. da 3pl com vocês.
5.4.3. A perda de vós.
6.
Lara Bermejo
2Estudos de Lingüística Galega, 14 (2022). ISSN: 1989-578X
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1. THE SYSTEM OF CONTINENTAL PORTUGAL
The system of pronouns of address in Portuguese is known because of its complexity.
Apart from the differences among dialect varieties, we lack empirical data with respect to
some. European Portuguese exhibits a system that, according to Cunha & Cintra
(1992), Mira Mateus et al. (2006), Raposo et al. (2020) and Lara Bermejo (in press), opposes a
tripartite paradigm in singular to a bipartite one in plural, except in the northernmost areas of
Portugal (Table 1).
Table 1. Current system of address in European Portuguese
T N V
Singular Tu + 2sg
Você + 3sg
Null subject + 3sg
Noun phrase + 3sg
O senhor / a senhora
+ 3sg
Noun phrase + 3sg
Plural Vós + 2pl (north)
Vocês + 2pl / 3pl Vocês + 2pl / 3pl Os senhores / as
senhoras + 3pl
Based on Table 1, tu plus 2sg are used for intimate contexts, while o senhor / a
senhora plus 3sg is resorted to for formal situations, though it can also be followed by a noun
phrase, such as professional status. In the middle of both, there emerge the so-called N
contexts (Cook 2019), which are conceived as those informal or semi-formal situations, but in
which a T form is extremely impolite and a formal one is too courteous. This in-between
degree swings among a number of possibilities, such as the pronoun você plus 3sg as well as
the strategy of using null subject plus 3sg or resorting to noun phrases plus 3sg, among which
proper names and professional statuses stand out.
However, the plural is more syncretic, for it envisages os senhores / as senhoras plus 3pl
for V contexts and gathers in vocês for other diaphasic situations. Only the northernmost
districts in Portugal still present vós plus 2pl for T contexts. In addition, vós can also appear
throughout Portugal in a number of reverential and stereotyped contexts: church,
army and parliament. Moreover, it is necessary to make clear that vocês induces a double
agreement pattern, since by depending on the syntactic elements that anchor it, it can prompt
2pl and 3pl Based on the standard, the 3pl appears in verbs and whereas
the 2pl is established in objects and possessives.
The paradigm depicted in Table 1 is the standard and prestigious model in modern-day
Portugal. Nevertheless, Lara Bermejo (2018a, 2020a) and Lara Bermejo & Guilherme (2021)
demonstrate that, from a variationist perspective, this country envisages further alternatives
for formality. Rural and isolated areas in the interior and southern districts of continental
Portugal are characterised by also relying on archaic forms, such as vossemecê(s) or vomecê(s),
to address somebody politely. This resource is limited to people from low educational
backgrounds and, mainly, the elderly. As a matter of fact, this strategy has been in increasing
disuse since the late 1900s, by favouring the employment of the standard o(s) senhor(es) and
their corresponding alternatives based on gender.
There is even an ulterior feature that is worthy of mention: the inadequacy of você as a
singular pronoun. According to Faria (2009) and Lara Bermejo & Guilherme (2018), the usage
of você is avoided because it can be evaluated as formal (V), informal (T), neutral (N), and to
some extent, offensive. Fear of committing a face-threatening act (one that is impolite or
contradictory to the one expected in a given situation) on the part of the addresser leads to its
elimination and to resort to the so-called null subject plus 3sg. This alternative is, in the view
The system of pronouns of address in Madeira
Estudos de Lingüística Galega, 14 (2022). ISSN: 1989-578X
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3
of Carreira (2003), the most extended form of addressing someone in a neutral context.
Nonetheless, when a subject needs to be made explicit, speakers tend to produce an array of
noun phrases, such as the profession (professor, engineer…) or proper name of the addressee.
The greatest change in progress that occurs in plural concerns the pronoun vocês. Despite
the fact that vós plus 2pl was useful for centuries to address a group of people in an informal
or intimate context, there has been an expansion of vocês to the detriment of vós for this same
type of situation. However, vocês is syntactically 3pl and, depending on the region within
Portugal, induces 2pl in part of its elements. The study carried out by Lara
Bermejo (2020a) determines that, when vocês ousts vós as a stressed pronoun, its 3pl
starts spreading throughout the paradigm in a gradual way, adhering to the
following hierarchy: subject > / verb > accusative > dative > possessive. The
emergence of the 3pl with reference to vocês is at a different stage of this continuum and has
now completed the hierarchy in the south-easternmost area, in the Alentejo and Algarve zone
that borders Spain. Nowadays, vocês has not ruled out the usage of vós in the northernmost
districts of continental Portugal, where the latter form is a valid pronoun for T plural (Aguiar
& Paiva 2017, Lara Bermejo 2022a).
In contrast to the extensive data we have at our disposal regarding continental Portugal,
the reality of the two archipelagos is less researched and, although they are expected to follow
the southern patterns (which are standard), there is little information about the actual
situation on the islands. As a result, the purpose of this article is to partly this gap by
pinpointing the current pronominal paradigm of politeness in Madeira, and comparing it to
the rest of the country as well as to cross-linguistic tendencies. The paper is divided as
follows: in 2, I will discuss the data available regarding the latest variations in the
politeness system within Madeira; in 3, I will explain the theoretical framework, corpus and
methodology I have applied; in 4, I will describe the data I have collected; in 5, I will analyse
the results based on several factors: their geolinguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatic behaviour
and grammatical patterns; in 6, I will show the conclusions and, in 7, I will list the references I
have consulted throughout.
2. THE SYSTEM OF MADEIRA
As for the archipelagos, we only rely on the research carried out by Bazenga (2019 and
2022) in Madeira. According to this author, the Madeira society resembles that of continental
Portugal, except in the family context. While tu is the T pronoun and o senhor / a senhora is the
formal one, você, the null subject strategy and the array of multiple noun phrases are utilised
in N situations, with a clear avoidance in the case of você. Nonetheless, in Madeira, parents can
still be addressed by means of non-T pronouns and strategies, such as (1-2), taken from
Bazenga (2019),
(1) A senhora comprou o passe?
The madam already buy.3SG.PST. the pass
‘Did you, madam, already buy the pass?’
(2) O pai comprou o passe?
The father already buy.3SG.PST. the pass
‘Did you, father, already buy the pass?’
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This divergence with respect to the rest of Portugal (we lack information about the
Azores) is relevant, because it highlights that the family can still be considered a hierarchical
entity, unlike in the continent, where this consideration stopped being so in the late 20th
century (Lara Bermejo & Guilherme 2021). In any case, the conception of family as a solidary
institution in Portugal occurred more than a century and a half later than elsewhere in
western Europe, such as France and Spain (Lara Bermejo 2020b, Lara Bermejo & Guilherme
2021). Additionally, Bazenga (2019) suggests that in Madeira explicit subjects are preferred
even in N contexts, in contrast to the preference for null subjects in continental Portugal,
according to Carreira (2003) and Lara Bermejo & Guilherme (2018). Nevertheless, this
tendency towards an explicit subject in sensitive contexts does not entail the usage of você,
which is omitted, as occurs in continental Portugal. For Bazenga (2019, 2022), você mainly
arose to address neighbours.
Moreover, the differences remarked upon by Bazenga (2019, 2022) must also be
constrained to sociolinguistic parameters, since age and educational background have been
crucial in this sense. Her investigations highlight that the older the speakers are, the likelier it
is for them to conceive the family as a hierarchical institution and, therefore, to use non-T
strategies towards parents. In addition, the lower the educational background of the speakers,
the likelier it is for them to maintain hierarchy within the family environment. Lastly, the
usage of você mainly to address neighbours was not conditioned by any sociolinguistic
variables.
As a matter of fact, we do not have much more information on forms of address in Madeira
at our disposal, but Soares (1914), Silva (1950) and Rosado (2003) point out the existence of
the variant amecê throughout the entire archipelago. This form stems from vossa mercê and it
resembles the archaic alternatives vossemecê or vomecê I have already referred to; however,
these authors do not restrict it to isolated areas or a sociolinguistic
The lack of detailed information and the apparent inclination towards patterns different
from those widespread in continental Portugal make it necessary to carry out a rigorous
analysis of the actual and current paradigm of pronouns of address in Madeira. As a
consequence, below I depict the corpus and methodology I have employed, as well as the
theoretical framework this paper has followed. I then show the data and analyse the results
and, lastly, I present the conclusions of this in-depth study.
3. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK, CORPUS AND METHODOLOGY
This research paper is based on the variationist theory. Hence, the results I will show
throughout will establish whether or not the usage of either pronoun and is
conditioned by the sociolinguistic features of the speakers. Furthermore, I will apply the
theses by Scollon, Scollon & Jones (1995) regarding the politeness systems. According to these
authors, any situation and society can be divided into three possible alternatives: hierarchical,
deferential and solidary. In a hierarchical system, there is no reciprocity in the exchange of
pronoun and forms of address, since the person who is in an upper position gives T to the one
with a lower status, but s/he receives V from his/her interlocutor. This means that the person
with a lower status gives V but receives T. In the deferential system, there is reciprocity
between interlocutors, but they tend to exchange V by default. Lastly, in the solidary paradigm,
there is again reciprocity, but the default exchange is now T.
Societies can also favour any of these three alternatives. Western countries were
hierarchical and deferential for hundreds of years, until the late 18th century (Brown & Gilman
1960). From that moment onwards, these societies have gradually favoured pragmatic
The system of pronouns of address in Madeira
Estudos de Lingüística Galega, 14 (2022). ISSN: 1989-578X
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solidarity by default and every country that has selected this system has always applied it
in the family environment to later extend it to friends, spouses and, in an ulterior phase, to
strangers (see Brown & Gilman 1960, and, for cases, Benigni & Bates 1977, Paulston
1984, Rigatuso 1992, Godoy 2010, Molina Martos 2020 and 2021, Lara Bermejo &
Guilherme 2021, Lara Bermejo 2022a). Therefore, this article is also committed to unveiling
whether Madeira is inclined towards solidarity or, on the contrary, it prefers other strategies
by default, as happens in continental Portugal despite the timid increase of solidarity in recent
years (Lara Bermejo in press).
However, there may be a misunderstanding in the usage of the terms T, N and V. Even
though the literature has labelled N as neutral, this does not mean that N strategies neutralise
the degree of politeness. N forms and strategies arise as distant terms and alternatives for
situations in which interlocutors T impolite and V too polite. Moreover, N terms are
usually employed reciprocally, but if they are resorted to in non-reciprocal communicative
acts, their connotation conveys the degree of distance the interlocutors choose to maintain.
Therefore, the non-reciprocity of terms, regardless of their combination, must be understood
as a hierarchical relationship, while reciprocity denotes egalitarianism. The choice of either V,
N and T in this (non-)reciprocity marks the degree of distance interlocutors wish to maintain,
the former being the most and the latter, the least distant option.
With the aim of collecting as many occurrences as possible from spontaneous speech, I
have invented an audio-visual methodology that prompts the production of second person
pronouns and The likelihood of second person pronouns appearing is extremely
low in a semi-conducted interview, so its elicitation makes it necessary to adopt other
methods such as those pointed out by Lara Bermejo (2016) for this same line of research
applied to Spanish.
As a result, I have compiled a series of scenes from a well-known sitcom in Portugal (Aqui
não há quem viva), in which many types of characters address different groups of people.
Firstly, I described to the informants what the character said; they were then required to
become the character and repeat the lines as if their interlocutors were in front of them. All
participants were asked to play the same characters in the same scenes. In this sense, there
has been no variation in the sample depending on the sociolinguistic variables of the
informants. This method worked successfully and enabled the elicitation of singular and
plural stressed pronouns, as well as their in all the syntactic contexts that were
envisaged: verb, accusative, dative and possessive.
Likewise, all informants were shown scenes that covered many types of contexts in order
to also comprehend the degree of politeness and type of courtesy that is now the norm
throughout the archipelago. The informants were thus required to speak to one addressee or
group by taking into account the degree of formality of the situation. These scenes covered the
following communicative acts and participants: customers, children, parents, neighbours,
church, friends, spouses, students, professors, colleagues, subordinate to superior, job
interview and TV interview. While friends and spouses are intimate contexts, some of them
present asymmetrical relations, the job interview entailed the address from a
manager towards a candidate; another work-related scene showed the address from a
subordinate towards a superior; in another scene, a professor talked to a student; and in a
scene where church was the setting, the priest talked to his audience. Likewise, there was a
series of scenes that can be considered either asymmetrical or symmetrical: the address from
children towards their parents and viceversa. The results will determine whether these family
environments are perceived in Madeira as hierarchical or not. In a latter selection of scenes I
showed some N situations: interaction between customers and sellers, neighbours, colleagues
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and participants in a TV interview. The reason why these have been labelled N resides in the
fact that there is no difference of power among interlocutors, but these situations do not
necessarily trigger informality or much formality.
The survey I have depicted above has been applied to 83 informants (with the
sociolinguistic variables detailed in Table 2), from whom I have extracted 2,319 occurrences.
The island of Madeira provided 63 speakers, while Porto Santo supplied 20 informants.
Table 2. Number of informants, based on their sociolinguisc features
SEX MEN: 35 (43%) / WOMEN: 48 (57%)
Educaonal background High [university studies]: 27 (30%) / Low [non-university studies]: 56 (70%)
Age -30: 37 (44.5%) / 30-60: 26 (31.3%) / +60: 20 (24.2%)
Demographics Rural: 59 (71%) / Urban: 24 (29%)
Furthermore, the methodology has been carried out on the two inhabited islands as map
1 shows:
Map 1. Localies surveyed
It is important to underlie that over two thirds of the population living in Madeira are
concentrated in Funchal and its suburbs, while over 80% of the inhabitants are settled on the
southern coast, near Funchal ( da Madeira 2021).
The occurrences have been subsequently based on the sociolinguistic variables I
have mentioned, but also pursue a series of linguistic parameters: the stressed pronoun, the
syntactic context of the stressed pronoun (subject or prepositional phrase), verb,
accusative, dative, possessive, as well as degree of politeness. The chi squared has also been
applied to the data I provide below in order to discover which variable is in the
usage of either strategy. The instances I show will be labelled after the extra-linguistic features
of the informant: M (male), F (female), -30 (younger than 30 years old), 30-60 (between 30
and 60 years old), +60 (older than 60), L (low educational background), H (high educational
background), city and demographics. Consequently, M+60H Funchal urban equates to male
above the age of 60 with a high educational background, from Funchal, an urban area.
The system of pronouns of address in Madeira
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4. DATA
As set out above, the method I employed made it possible to elicit stressed pronouns as
well as different in the rest of the syntactic contexts. I show the distribution of each
of them in tables 3 and 4.
Table 3. Stressed pronouns
STRESSED PRONOUN: SUBJECT STRESSED PRONOUN: PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE
Singular
Tu: 164 (23%)
Você: 204 (28,5%)
O senhor / a senhora: 107 (15%)
Noun phrase: 64 (9%)
Null subject + 3sg: 179 (24,5%)
Ti (congo): 76 (26,7%)
Você: 20 (7%)
O senhor / a senhora: 6 (2%)
Si (consigo): 176 (62,3%)
Noun phrase: 6 (2%)
Total 718 (100%) 284 (100%)
Plural
Vós: 11 (4%)
Vocês: 232 (86%)
Os senhores / as senhoras: 28 (10%)
Vós: 1 (20%)
Vocês: 79 / Convosco: 3 (60%)
Os senhores / as senhoras: 1 (20%)
Total 271 (100%) 5 (100%)
Table 4. Agreement in the ineconal system
VERB REFLEXIVE ACCUSATIVE DATIVE POSSESSIVE
2sg: 372 2sg: 1 2sg: 136 2sg: 12 2sg: 197
3sg: 509 3sg: 28 3sg: 58 3sg: 27 3sg: 96
2pl: 6 2pl: 1 2pl: 89 2pl: 99 2pl: 47
3pl: 316 3pl: 79 3pl: 22 3pl: 6 3pl: 7
Table 3 clearly shows that Madeira speakers explicitly use você in singular as well as vós in
plural, though the latter pronoun was produced on a few occasions. Likewise, the verbal
exhibits a 2pl agreement six times, whereas the pronoun has only arisen
once with a 2pl desinence (3-7).
(3) copiou e vou aceitar
3SG.NOM. 3SG.PST.copy and no 1SG.PRES.go INF.accept
o exame (M-30H Funchal urban)
the exam
‘You cheated and I am not going to accept your exam’
(4) o representante
3SG.NOM. 3SG.PRES.be the representative
Desta greve? (F-30L Ponta do Solo rural)
of+this strike
‘Are you the representative of this strike?’
(5) sempre a falar
3SG.NOM. 3SG.PRES.be always to INF.speak
mal das pessoas (F30-60H Santana rural)
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bad of+the persons
‘You are always criticising the people’
(6) sois o futuro
2PL.NOM. 2PL.PRES.be the future
da igreja (M30-60H Funchal urban)
of+the church
‘You are the future of the church’
(7) Tendes de vos basear
2PL.PRES.have of 2PL.REFL. INF.base
no cristianismo (F-30H Camacha rural)
in+the Christianity
‘You have to follow your lives on a Christian life’
The remaining syntactic elements in 2pl do not necessarily refer to vós, since
throughout Portugal vocês induces 3pl in verbs and and 2pl in objects and
possessives (8-10).
(8) maus pais,
3PL.NOM. 3PL.PRES.be. bad parents, now no
vos quero voltar a ver (M-30L Caniço rural)
2PL.ACC. 1SG.PRES.want INF.return to INF.see
‘You are bad parents, I don’t want to see you anymore’
(9) Filhos, portaram-se bem e
Children 3PL.NOM. 3PL.PST.behave+3PL.REFL. well and here
a que vos
3PL.PRES.have the television that 2PL.DAT.
tinha prometido
1SG.PST.have PCP.promise
(F-30L Machico rural)
‘Children, you behaved well and here you are the television I had promised you’
(10) ter que pagar
3PL.NOM. 3PL.PRES.go INF.have that INF.pay
pelos vossos (F+60L Funchal urban)
for+the 2PL.POSS. appliances
‘You have to pay for your home appliances’
Besides the abovementioned examples, the results have also shown the employment of
another three strategies that the literature has repeatedly referred to: o senhor / a senhora to
address someone politely, the resource of the noun phrase plus 3sg to treat somebody with
whom distance should be maintained and the selection of no subject plus 3sg for the same
diaphasic situation (11-17). According to Raposo et al. (2020), the choice of either depends on
the degree of distance, with o senhor / a senhora being more formal than the proper name plus
3sg, but less than the explicitness of the treatment followed by social status plus 3sg (such as o
senhor doutor, ‘sir doctor’).
The system of pronouns of address in Madeira
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(11) A menina foi a melhor
The girl 3SG.PST.be the best
candidata que tive (F+60L de Lobos rural)
candidate that 1SG.PST.have
‘You, girl, were the best candidate I have had’
(12) A Joana a melhor candidata
The Joana 3SG.PRES.be the best candidate
para esta vaga (F30-60H Caniçal rural)
for this job
‘Joana, you are the best candidate for this job position’
(13) Queria saber se o podia
1SG.PST.want INF.know if the boss 3SG.PST.can
dar-me alguns dias de folga (M-30L Caniço rural)
INF.give+1SG.DAT. some days of rest
‘I would like to know whether you, boss, could give me some holidays’
(14) A muito (F+60L Funchal urban)
The mother 3SG.PRES.be very bad
‘Mother, you are very bad’
(15) O senhor o melhor
The sir 3SG.PRES.be the best
chefe que tive (M-30L Santo urban)
boss that 1SG.PST.have
‘You sir were the best boss I have ever had’
(16) A vizinha sempre
The neighbour 3SG.PRES.be always
a cochichar (M+60L Funchal urban)
to INF.gossip
‘You, neighbour, are always gossiping’
(17) A senhora tem e
The lady 3SG.PRES.have experience and
parece (M30-60H Santa Cruz rural)
3SG.PRES.seem responsible
‘You lady have expertise and seem responsible’
These examples the array of possibilities in non-T communicative acts. Informants
have chosen the proper name, the professional status, the kinship position and the noun
phrase, o senhor / a senhora. It is important to clarify that I will treat the phrase o senhor / a
senhora as virtually pronominal. Although it emerges as a nominal compound, its behaviour
resembles that of a pronoun (in fact, Cunha & Cintra 1992 have already pointed out this fact),
since it has achieved a very degree of coalescence and is undergoing a
grammaticalization process with loss of phonic weight that in Brazil has been addressed with
solutions such as sinhô and sô (Ramos 2011).
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As for the null subject plus 3sg, its emergence reaches up to 179 occurrences. It is
important to make clear what is understood by null subject plus 3sg, because this terminology
lends itself to spurious conclusions in a pro drop language such as Portuguese. The tokens I
have counted do not encompass any sentence without a pronoun, but they entail the number
of sentences without any explicit subject in a given pragmatic situation. This means that, for a
scene, if the informant has produced 5 out of 6 sentences without any subject (but
s/he has done so in one), then none of them can be considered null subject plus 3sg. The fact
that of them fail to exhibit a subject simply follows the grammatical behaviour of a pro
drop language, but it becomes clearly apparent that the sentence with the subject is
simultaneously the implicit subject of the other As a consequence, I have applied the label
of null subject plus 3sg only when the informant did not produce any subject at all in all the
speech s/he uttered throughout an entire situation. This slight difference is crucial, for it
cannot be said that the informants who resorted to a null subject plus 2sg tried to avoid the
subject in order not to be impolite. The mere employment of 2sg establishes the relationship
and implies the usage of tu. Nevertheless, the selection of the 3sg without any subject leaves
the treatment the addresser has in his/her mind, and tries to avoid at any cost precisely to
avoid impoliteness, unclear. In this sense, the 3sg envisages several alternatives: o senhor / a
senhora, the noun phrase or você, while the 2sg can only refer to tu.
The occurrences I have depicted up to now suggest the large paradigm that exists in
Madeira Portuguese, mainly in singular. All these characteristics are at the same time
constrained by geographical and sociolinguistic variables, as well as by universal pragmatic
tendencies and cross-linguistic grammatical patterns. Therefore, in the next section, I will
analyse all these factors under study.
5. ANALYSIS
The previous section showed the total results of the survey and shed light on the existence
of the pronouns of address in the Madeira of today, as well as the system.
Nevertheless, the data suggest that not every pronoun or strategy is conditioned by the same
geographical, sociolinguistic or pragmatic variables. In fact, the geolinguistic constraint
applies to the behaviour of vocês and its agreement pattern only, since the results have not
provided any pattern for the usage of tu, vós, você, o senhor (and its counterparts in
gender and number) and other strategies, such as null subject plus 3sg or noun phrase plus
3sg.
Moreover, the analysis reveals that sociolinguistic factors affect the usage of você as well
as the strategies employed to address parents, but not any other pronoun or strategy.
Likewise, the results show that the pragmatic reality of Madeira is undergoing important
changes regarding the conception of family, the spread of pragmatic solidarity, as well as the
virtual disappearance of vós even for the expected stereotyped contexts. Finally, it is worth
mentioning that grammar also plays a role in the changes in progress: this is especially
relevant in the extension of vocês as well as in the deletion of vós. Furthermore, the data have
also been supplied with tokens of stressed pronouns in object positions as well as with dative
clitics for accusative contexts.
In light of the abovementioned features, the analysis is focused on the following
phenomena: in 5.1., I discuss the geolinguistic extension of vocês; in 5.2., I present the
sociolinguistic constraints I have referred to previously; in 5.3., I argue the pragmatic
tendencies attested nowadays in Madeira; and in 5.4., I detail the grammatical behaviour of
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the anchoring vocês and the elimination of vós, as well as the other phenomena
regarding clitics and objects.
5.1. Geolinguiscs
As has been stated, the single element that is subject to geographic variation is the
extension of the agreement referring to vocês. This was expected, since this pronoun and its
vary on the continent, depending on a continuum. In previous sections I stated that
continental Portugal possesses different areas that are characterised by prompting the 3pl in a
given implicational stage within a hierarchy. As a result, it is also necessary to draw the
diffusion of the 3pl in the syntactic elements anchoring vocês in Madeira (map 2) in order
todiscover whether it has the same behaviour and to what extent the 3pl has reached the end
of the continuum.
Map 2. Extension of 3pl anchoring vocês
Map 2 represents the cartographic diffusion of the 3pl throughout the objects and the
possessive. It is important to bear in mind that in the case of 3pl the entire archipelago is in
agreement on the stressed pronoun, the and the verb. However, the emergence of the
3pl in further elements depends upon a diatopic factor. Whilst Funchal and its surroundings
now exhibit 3pl in objects and possessives (18 and 19a-21a), Porto Santo and some areas in
southern Madeira and around the village of Santana in the north also present the 3pl in the
accusative and the dative, but not yet in the possessive (18, 19a-20a and 21b). The eastern
part of the island as well as most of the southern zone only the accusative in 3pl, but
not the dative and the possessive (18, 19a and 20-21b). Lastly, the rest of Madeira only agrees
on the verb, the and the stressed pronoun in 3pl, but prefers the objects and the
possessive to be construed in 2pl morphology (18, 19b-21-b).
(18) (M-30N Funchal urban // F60N Porto Santo rural // M-30N Machico rural //
M30-60N Porto Moniz rural)
portaram-se muito bem
You.3PL behave.3PL.PST.+REFL.3PL. very well
‘You behaved very well
(19) a. (M-30N Funchal urban // F60N Porto Santo rural // M-30N Machico rural)
os quero
Already no 3PL.ACC. want.1SG.PRS.
Ver mais
see.INF. more
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‘I don’t want to see you anymore’
b. (M30-60N Porto Moniz rural)
vos quero
Already no 2PL.ACC. want.1SG.PRS.
Ver mais
see.INF. more
‘I don’t want to see you anymore’
(20) a. (M-30N Funchal urban // F60N Porto Santo rural)
Comprei-lhes uma
Buy.1SG.PST.+3PL.DAT. a television
‘I bought you a television’
b. (M-30N Machico rural // M30-60N Porto Moniz rural)
Comprei-vos uma
Buy.1SG.PST.+2PL.DAT. a television
‘I bought you a television’
(21) a. (M-30N Funchal urban)
ter de pagar os seus
Go.3PL.PRS. have.INF. of pay.INF. the POSS.3PL.
electrical appliances
‘You must pay for your electrical appliances’
b. (F60N Porto Santo rural // M-30N Machico rural // M30-60N Porto Moniz
rural)
ter de pagar os vossos
Go.3PL.PRS. have.INF. of pay.INF. the POSS.2PL.
electrical appliances
‘You must pay for your electrical appliances’
The geographical distribution drawn by map 2 points out two tendencies: the refers
to the fact that no pattern is followed in the diffusion of the 3pl. The appearance of
this agreement in objects and possessives is attested randomly and suggests that every area
ends up spreading this to further elements without the pressure or the affectedness
from a neighbouring region; secondly, the most rural and remote areas within Madeira (the
west, the north-west and the centre) are coherent in maintaining the 3pl only in the stressed
pronoun, the verb and the The relative isolation of this region with respect to the
rest of the archipelago may have played a role in this sense.
5.2. Sociolinguiscs
In the previous paragraphs I described the distribution of stressed pronouns and
in current Madeira. Nonetheless, there are two options that seem to be subject to
the sociolinguistic parameters of the speaker (apart from the communicative context, as will
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be discussed in the pragmatic section): the usage of você as well as the strategies to address
members of the family.
In Table 5, I detail the sociolinguistic variables that have explicitly used the pronoun você.
Table 5. Sociolinguisc variables in the usage of você
SEX AGE EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND DEMOGRAPHICS
Male: 32 (91,5%) out of 35 -30: 30 (81%) out of 37 Low: 44 (78,5%) out of 56 Rural: 49 (83%) out of 59
Female: 35 (73%) out of 48 30-60: 21 (80,7%) out of 26
+60: 16 (80%) out of 20 High: 23 (85%) out of 27 Urban: 18 (75%) out of 24
67 (80,7%) out of 83 informants
Table 5 clearly establishes the scarce differences that seem to appear when collating the
Regardless of age, employment is high and the same applies to educational
background and, to some extent, the demographic pattern. Only sex supplies a wider gap, with
the male informants being more inclined to produce você. If the chi squared is calculated, no
variable is except the one that refers to sex, which grants the following result: p-
value is .034748, at p < .05. In other words, the resource of você in Madeira is
restrained to the sex of the informant and not to any other sociolinguistic characteristic, but
this restriction is statistically in a minimal proportion.
Another crucial aspect is related to the hierarchical consideration of family. Below, in
Table 6, I list the sociolinguistic of the speakers who have resorted to non-T strategies
to address parents. Attention should be drawn to the fact that Table 6 synthesises all the
strategies that are not associated with informality. In this sense, both V and N alternatives
have been included. In the pragmatic section, I will disentangle the behaviour of both
strategies (N and V) in this regard.
Table 6. Sociolinguisc variables in the usage of non-T strategies towards parents
SEX AGE EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND DEMOGRAPHICS
Male: 15 (42,8%) out of 35 -30: 10 (27%) out of 37 Low: 24 (42,8%) out of 56 Rural: 22 (37,3%) out of 59
Female: 19 (39,5%) out of
48
30-60: 11 (42,3%) out of 26
+60: 13 (65%) out of 20 High: 10 (37%) out of 27 Urban: 12 (50%) out of 24
34 (40,9%) out of 83 informants
Table 6 suggests the increase of pragmatic solidarity and the gradual conception of family
as an egalitarian entity. It reveals that at least 4 out of 10 speakers in current Madeira still
considers the family entity as non-solidary. As that which occurred with the usage of você, the
percentages are more or less close to each other, and it becomes necessary to apply the chi
squared. In this case, the single variable that has emerged as is age: p-value is
.020557, at p < .05. In other words, the older the informants, the more inclined they
are to employ non-T strategies in the family environment.
To summarise, the current sociolinguistic panorama in Madeira determines that the
employment of você is quite extended, but it is more rooted in men. Furthermore, the
hierarchical (at least, non-solidary) conception of family is still valid amongst older people,
whereas the rest of the speakers tend to make it solidary, mainly in the case of younger
speakers. Below, I discuss the pragmatic behaviour of the current system, focusing on the
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pronoun você, the gradual tendency towards solidarity in plural forms and within the family
and the maintenance of deference in singular and the elimination of vós.
5.3. Pragmacs
The ruling pragmatic system in current Madeira suggests three changes in progress: the
total disappearance of vós even in contexts where it had been preserved; the gradual tendency
towards pragmatic solidarity in plural; and the maintenance of deference and distance in
singular, though less and less within the family and in with the usage of você.
5.3.1. The usage of vós
The employment of vós has been scarce, as Table 7 depicts.
Table 7. Usage of vós based on sociolinguisc proles
SEX AGE EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND DEMOGRAPHICS
Male: 4 (11,4%) out of 35 -30: 2 (5,4%) out of 37 Low: 3 (5,3%) out of 56 Rural: 6 (10,1%) out of 59
Female: 4 (8,3%) out of 48 30-60: 4 (15,4%) out of 26
+60: 2 (10%) out of 20 High: 5 (18,5%) out of 27 Urban: 2 (8,3%) out of 24
8 (9,6%) out of 83 informants
Although I have already made clear that the usage of vós does not depend upon any
sociolinguistic feature (as determined by the statistical proof), I have intentionally included
this information in Table 7 in order to demonstrate the generalised disappearance of vós in
Madeira society. Scarcely 10% of informants have produced it within the expected contexts
from where it may emerge.
The twelve occasions on which speakers produced it referred to the church, precisely one
of the situations where it is expected to be attested, but its scarcity and its substitution by the
pronoun vocês in most informants, regardless of their sociolinguistic indicate that it is
close to disappearance even in these contexts.
The gradual loss of vós even for certain stereotyped contexts resembles its Spanish
counterpart in Hispanic America. The opposition vosotros-ustedes that dominates in Spain, the
former being T plural and the latter V plural, stopped being valid in Hispanic America in the
late 18th and early 19th centuries, when ustedes generalised as the single plural pronoun,
regardless of the degree of politeness (Lara Bermejo 2022a). Nevertheless, vosotros was
maintained as the selected pronoun within the church, army and parliament, exactly the same
situations as for European Portuguese (Cunha & Cintra 1972). The usage of vosotros is widely
attested in Hispanic America for these purposes, as Laslop (2010) demonstrates for
Mexico, but this same author has drawn attention to the fact that even these contexts are
gradually dismissing vosotros as a formula and are on the verge of choosing ustedes plus 3pl.
This is exactly what my corpus suggests regarding current Portuguese, at least in Madeira.
5.3.2. Address within the family
With respect to the family environment, Bazenga (2019) remarks upon the profound
maintenance of non-T strategies from children towards their parents, with a persistence as
regards the hierarchical view of family, as that which occurred in western societies prior to the
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French Revolution. According to this author, nearly three quarters of the people she surveyed
preferred alternatives such as o senhor / a senhora, the noun pai and mãe followed by 3sg
rather than 2sg, and the strategy of null subject plus 3sg. This tendency was, however,
restrained to elderly speakers and to informants with a low educational background. My
survey has further analysed this fact and in Table 6 I referred to the fact that the elderly are
more inclined to do so, with this being less and less the case the younger the speaker is.
Regardless, in this section I will deal with the strategies people from Madeira resort to for
relatives in a higher position. In Tables 8, 9 and 10, I detail the number of occurrences of T, N
and V strategies respectively to address parents.
Table 8. T strategies towards parents
TU NULL SUBJECT + 2SG ACCUSATIVE 2SG PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE
26 (29%) 22 (24,7%) 20 (22,5%) Ti: 21 (23,8%)
89 (100%)
Table 9. N strategies towards parents
VOCÊ NULL SUBJECT + 3SG PAI / MÃE (NOUN
PHRASE) ACCUSATIVE 3SG PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE
12 (15,6%) 5 (6,5%) 18 (23,3%) 15 (19,5%)
Si: 21 (27,3%)
Você: 1 (1,3%)
Pai / mãe (noun phrase): 5 (6,5%)
77 (100%)
Table 10. V strategies towards parents
O SENHOR / A SENHORA PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE
5 (20%) Si: 21 (80%)
26 (100%)
Tables 8, 9 and 10 indicate that T alternatives are based upon the pronoun tu and
2sg Nonetheless, non-T strategies exhibit further possibilities: the explicit usage of
você, the employment of o senhor / a senhora, the status held within the family as the subject
of the sentence (mãe, pai) as well as the null subject plus 3sg.
Firstly, the choice for the kinship status is always followed by the 3sg, revealing that it is
not a T strategy. Secondly, the accusative in 3sg is not reinforced by any stressed
pronoun or form, which is why I have labelled it as N, as in the strategy of null subject plus 3sg,
for it leaves the address opaque. Finally, the most diffused prepositional phrase is si, again
increasing the opacity of the form of address, since it is useful for any resource that envisages
the 3sg regardless of the subject form. In any case, as (22-24) demonstrate, at present 40% of
Madeira speakers produce non-T strategies to address parents.
(22) A muito e
The mother 3SG.PRES.be very bad and no
me deixa sair (F-30L Machico rural)
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1SG.DAT. 3SG.PRES.let INF.go out
‘You mother are very bad and don’t let me go out’
(23) A senhora fez mal (F+60L Porto Santo rural)
The lady 3SG.PST.do bad
‘You mother did badly’
(24) me deixa
3SG.NOM. no 1SG.DAT. 3SG.PRES.let
sair (F30-60H Caniçal rural)
INF.go out
‘You don’t let me go out’
The resource of você has been employed by 4 elderly, 5 middle-aged and one young
informant. O senhor / a senhora, on the contrary, has been used by one elderly, 2 middled-aged
and two young informants. The noun phrase strategy is divided as follows: 9 elderly, 4 middle-
aged, and 4 young people. Finally, the null subject has been preferred by 1 elderly, 4 middle-
aged and 1 young. The overall results suggest the tendency within the family entity towards
solidarity, but undergoing an intermediate phase earlier.
Apart from the fact that 40% of the sample used non-T strategies towards parents, the
most diffused pronouns and alternatives are those associated with N, since o senhor / a
senhora hardly appeared. In this sense, the family concept has passed from being considered
hierarchical to being conceived slightly more solidary in these for they prefer N
strategies such as você, the family status plus 3sg or null subject plus 3sg. It cannot be
however, that this slow tendency means solidarity, rather less hierarchy, since the
abovementioned options are still deferential. Children gave V or N to their parents, but they
were replied to with the T form, so there was no reciprocity in the exchange of the level of
politeness. As a result, the transformation that the family has undergone in Madeira has
entailed an in-between phase, before a reversion to solidarity. Hence, the results found in
this study simply reveal the last relics of the family as a non-solidary entity, underlying
this in-between stage before achieving this goal.
This in-between phase is likewise underpinned again by Spanish. Godoy (2008,
2010) has documented the change in Spain that occurred in the early 19th century, when
upper-class and urban people started to address their parents through T. However, the usage
of pronoun tú (T) for parents was not immediate and, before this happened, children
underwent a stage in which they continued to employ V pronouns but with noun phrases that
were perceived as T. children ousted the terms padre (‘father’) and madre
(‘mother’) by favouring the allocutives papá (‘dad’) and mamá (‘mom’). The emergence of
these noun phrases did not imply the rise of tú, but there was a period of time in which T noun
phrases coexisted with V pronouns for the same interlocutors. With time, children also deleted
V pronouns and treated their parents by means of tú. This is not exclusive to the family, but
Molina Martos (2021) states that T noun phrases are always the prelude to T pronouns. Her
are based on the fact that there was also a generalised usage of tú in relationships
of friendship or marriage in the late 19th century after the previous universalisation of T noun
phrases for these contexts (Molina Martos 2020).
Unlike European Portuguese, Peninsular Spanish does not possess N pronouns or
strategies. Whereas Spanish mixed T noun phrases with V pronouns in the intermediate stage
before the total establishment of pragmatic solidarity in the abovementioned contexts,
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Madeira Portuguese has selected N forms and alternatives for this in-between phase towards
pragmatic solidarity.
5.3.3. The usage of você and null subject + 3sg
One of the relevant factors to be assessed as regards the pronoun você is its pragmatic
range in current Madeira. Based on my corpus, this resource has arisen on 15 (6.7%)
occasions to address someone politely; on 83 (37%) occasions to address an interlocutor who
is in a lower position; and on 126 (56.3%) occasions to treat an addressee who is in an equal
position. In the former case, the informants selected it to address a manager (5 young, 6
middled-aged and 3 elderly), while in the second situation, the addresser was either a
professor who spoke to a student or a manager who addressed a subordinate. In the latter
case, the interlocutors covered clients, non-elderly strangers and neighbours.
The distribution of pronouns makes it necessary to assess whether it also depends on the
diaphasic context or if it is only a matter of sociolinguistic factors. In Table 11, I detail the
number of times every pronoun has arisen and in what context.
Table 11. Distribuon of singular pronoun based on the diaphasic situaon
T N V
Tu 132 (27%) 32 (6,3%) 0
Você 101 (20%) 110 (21,8%) 13 (2,6%)
O senhor / a senhora 0 71 (14%) 46 (8,3%)
Table 11 illustrates that tu cannot be resorted to as a V strategy and neither can o senhor
be employed as T. The former is useful in intimate contexts and, to a lesser extent, in neutral
situations in which interlocutors share power. The latter is employed to give V to someone and
it can also appear in N situations. As was stated by the literature regarding continental
Portugal, você can be perceived as T, N and V. In Madeira, following the results of this
study, você as asymmetrical ascendant (V) is strictly limited to those informants that still use it
for parents as well as, on very rare occasions, to address a manager. The most diffused
pragmatic value of você in current Madeira lies on N and, in the case of T, if there is no
reciprocity in the treatment. In other words: você is deferential when it is expected to serve for
both interlocutors, and asymmetrical as it is also employed to address someone in a lower
position. To sum up, tu is solidary, o senhor is both deferential and hierarchical to address
someone in a higher position, and você is both deferential and hierarchical to address
someone in a lower position. The difference in the employment of o senhor and você for
deference is the degree of communicative distance, the former being more distant than the
latter. As a matter of fact, the statistical results leave no doubt; based on the chi squared, the p-
value is < 0.00001, at p < .05.
The apparent contradictory behaviour of você resembles the pragmatic path of singular
vós in both Portuguese and Spanish as a V pronoun. The pragmatic origin of this form was V in
the Middle Ages, but as V forms emerged by default, their courteous connotation stopped
being perceived and by the late Middle Ages and the early Modern Era, speakers made up new
polite strategies to replace the gradual loss of courtesy that vós was undergoing (Cintra 1972).
Nevertheless, the pragmatic depreciation of vós entailed a period of time in which it could be
considered in a contradictory way: polite, informal and even offensive. Vós became an N
pronoun, for contexts in which a V strategy was too polite and where tu was not polite enough.
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Thus, European Portuguese exhibited at that time a tripartite system in singular, in which vós
could be employed as the current você. The problem with N situations is the certainty about
such a consideration on the part of the interlocutor. The boundary between a T and an N
context can be narrow, as the frontier between N and V can also be. This is why tripartite
paradigms in singular are rarely attested cross-linguistically (Helmbrecht 2005) and can be
witnessed for example in Romanian.
The fear of committing a face-threatening act obliges the addresser to know some data
about his/her interlocutor in order to satisfy the communicative act. As você can be
problematic for the abovementioned reasons, speakers solve this problem by not explicitly
producing a pronoun and resorting to a null subject plus 3sg or to a noun phrase. This
alternative is crucial, since the explicit expression of a subject is sometimes necessary for
topical continuity or for contrastive purposes. When the informants who took part in this
survey needed to produce a subject in an N situation and did not want to use você, they asked
me about the proper name of the addressee. Only when they were given the name could they
go on with the discourse. In the cases in which no proper name was given, they could not help
inventing it. Additionally, if they knew the job their addressee had, this problem was solved by
referring to the professional status, but the knowledge of the proper name of the addressee
has become essential in current European Portuguese to avoid impoliteness in certain
situations in which the addresser does not consider você the right subject. This can even be
valued in the distribution of the null subject + 3sg and the explicit usage of a subject in both N
and V (Table 12).
Table 12. Occurrences of N and V with and without a subject
N V
Null subject + 3sg 99 (35,4%) 80 (57,6%)
Subject 181 (64,6%) 59 (42,4%)
Table 12 shows that, contrary to the statements in the literature regarding continental
Portugal, Madeira speakers prefer the explicitness of a subject in the most problematic
pragmatic context of all: N. However, V situations give the opposite picture though with a
lesser gap between percentages. It is pertinent to recall that accounting for the null subject
plus 2sg is useless, because any 2sg with or without a subject implies the usage of
tu. The data Table 12 provides is interesting, as it shows the need to make the degree of
politeness clear through the treatment itself in spite of the fact that the 3sg alone avoids such
a commitment. In this sense, Madeira seems to follow a different path from continental
Portugal, as Bazenga (2019) claims.
The results I present regarding você contradict a number of statements that can be found
repeatedly in the literature, but which are not supported by any empirical research. For
instance, Bacelar de Nascimento, Duarte & Mendes (2018) state that in Portugal, você is
employed by an elite who use it interchangeably with T as a way to differentiate themselves
from other social classes. This is the theory yet to beunderpinned by any empirical data
and which demands research. Secondly, these authors also remark that Portugal is
experiencing an increasing tendency towards the usage of você in younger generations and
speakers with low educational backgrounds. My study does not support this hypothesis at all
(it is important to highlight that these statements are not backed up by any empirical study)
and, with regards to Madeira, você is widely attested irrespective of sociolinguistic variables,
except for sex, though to a minimal degree. Thirdly, Bacelar de Nascimento, Duarte & Mendes
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(2018) resort to quite an extended in Lusophone linguistics when they that the
supposed increase of você is a direct of TV series produced in Brazil (telenovelas) as
well as of the mass migration on the part of Brazilian people to Portugal.
As regards the aforementioned apart from the lack of empirical evidence it
emerges as the least likely hypothesis of all. In the place, language contact and dialect
contact (which more or less behave the same) exhibit a series of stages that depend on both
linguistic and extra-linguistic features. While the former usually affect lexicon, to a lesser
extent phonetics, very rarely morpho-syntax and virtually never pragmatics, the latter
respond to the prestige and consideration of every language and dialect involved in the
contact (Van Coetsem 1988, Heine & Kuteva 2005). Applied to European Portuguese and its
contact with Brazilian Portuguese via television and migration, this means that the Portuguese
would have adopted many lexical items from the Brazilian variety, had they incorporated você
as it is used in Brazil. Moreover, the Portuguese would have started to produce certain
phonetic contexts in a Brazilian way, had they incorporated você as it is used in Brazil.
Additionally, the Portuguese would have developed morpho-syntactic features coming from
the Brazilian variety, had they incorporated você as it is used in Brazil. To summarise: if
Portugal had reinterpreted the pragmatic employment of você because of a direct
from the Brazilians, then European Portuguese would have to exhibit an array of linguistic
features, mainly in lexicon, less in phonetics and even less in syntax, by the
Brazilian variety. However, this has not occurred. The usage of você has nothing to do with the
Brazilian reality.
Empirical evidence supports my proposal that the employment of você in European
Portuguese is not affected by the Brazilian paradigm, at least regarding Madeira. Pragmatics is
a characteristic that varies depending on a country, but not on the language. It is very
rooted in the beliefs of a given society and, consequently, the pragmatic system of Portugal is
different from that of Brazil, which is also different from that of Angola and so on. It is not
Portuguese that is the factor that imposes a type of pragmatic system, rather, it is the country
regardless of the language and languages spoken within. For example, politeness in
Switzerland is not conceived the same way as in Germany, Italy and France, despite the fact
that this country presents the three languages. Indeed, Switzerland applies a type of
politeness that is useful for all of its languages (Hickey & Stewart 2005).
The same happens in the Hispanic world. The pragmatic conception of politeness in Spain
is not the same as that in Costa Rica, although both countries possess Spanish (Hummel, Kluge
& Laslop 2010, Hummel & Lopes 2020). Within Spain, however, speakers of Spanish,
Galician, Catalan and Basque behave identically in this respect because the pragmatic system
is constrained to what Spain understands, and not to what every language triggers.
Furthermore, the shift in pragmatics, in relation to politeness, follows the prestige
(Lara Bermejo 2022a). Spain changed to pragmatic solidarity in the late 18th century as a
French because the prestige at that time was France (Lara Bermejo 2020b). But in
the case of dialect contact, the change is usually made by those who are in a lower position.
Sinner (2010) investigated the pragmatic behaviour of Argentinians who migrated to both
Germany and Spain. While they did not develop any shift in Spanish if they lived in Germany,
those who settled in Spain gradually took the Spanish pragmatic system and not the other way
around. Lara Bermejo (2018b) studied the adoption of the politeness system from Ecuadorian
people in Spain and concluded that they tended to adopt the Spanish system because it is the
prestigious model in that country, but they did it in stages and very slowly, underlying again
the reluctance towards pragmatic shifts even within the same language. Hence, it is very
unlikely for Brazilian immigrants to have conditioned the Portuguese in Portugal. The
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statements by Bacelar de Nascimento, Duarte & Mendes (2018) do not have counterparts
elsewhere.
5.3.4. Tendency towards solidarity
I above that present day Madeira is gradually accepting solidarity in the plural.
The comparison of occurrences suggests this fact: vocês was produced 311 times whereas os
senhores / as senhoras was expressed 29 times. The latter was resorted to when the
addressees were elderly and in situations that implied distance, but not necessarily hierarchy,
such as when dealing with customers. It is worth mentioning that the same speakers that
talked to their parents by means of a V strategy in singular opted for vocês and not for os
senhores when they addressed both parents. Likewise, most informants that resorted to o
senhor or a senhora in singular preferred vocês for the same situations in plural. As that which
could occur in singular with the choice of o senhor and você or null subject plus 3sg, the
selection for either vocês or os senhores in certain contexts, mainly N, is subject to the degree
of distance and deference that the addresser establishes with respect to his/her addressees.
But, roughly speaking, vocês can be used for plural contexts where o senhor / a senhora would
be the most adequate strategy in singular.
Solidarity usually starts in the plural rather than in the singular in languages that have
pronominal divergences in this grammatical number for different diaphasic situations. For
example, French or Italian do not exhibit different pronouns in plural to distinguish the degree
of politeness, for vous can serve for both T and V and voi behaves alike. However, Peninsular
Spanish opposes vosotros for T to ustedes for V and Lara Bermejo (2022b) has demonstrated
that pragmatic solidarity in Spain began in the plural in the late 18th century. From that
moment, Spanish society gradually tended to accept more contexts via vosotros, but did not do
the same thing in singular. It was only when this happened in plural that Spain further
prompted pragmatic solidarity by also resorting to singular T pronouns in contexts where a V
pronoun was previously mandatory. Moreover, as Siewierska (2004) argues, it is quite rare to
attest languages that also establish pronominal differences in plural to express social deixis,
and this is why most languages only exhibit an array of pronouns (two in French or Italian, up
to four in Hispanic America) to mark diaphasic distinctions in singular. The plural lends itself
to syncretism and, as a result, entails fewer pragmatic risks; therefore, the plural favours
profound pragmatic changes in society, as occurs with the case of pragmatic solidarity.
5.4. Grammacal behaviour
Lastly, it is important to determine the grammatical behaviour of the Madeira paradigm:
stressed pronouns in unstressed positions, dative clitics in accusative contexts, the
prepositional phrase for non-T forms, the extension of the 3pl in vocês and the deletion of vós.
5.4.1. Objects and oblique: stressed pronouns, dave and the
preposional phrase
As for the usage of stressed pronouns in unstressed positions, this has only happened
with the pronoun você. it has been produced 9 times as an accusative and, though
there are no restrictions that apply to age or sex, 2 people have a high educational background
whereas 7 informants have a lower educational level (25-26). Likewise, the employment of
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dative pronouns in accusative contexts has also arisen 4 times, all of them produced by young
speakers with no educational background (27-29).
(25) Vi copiar (M-30L Caniço rural)
1SG.PST.see 3SG.NOM. INF.copy
‘I saw you cheated’
(26) Os vizinhos consideram
The neighbours 3PL.PRES.consider
o portavoz? (M-30L Santana rural)
3SG.NOM. the speaker
‘Do your neighbours consider you as the speaker?’
(27) Vi-lhe a copiar (M-30L Caniço rural)
1SG.PST.see+3SG.DAT. to INF.copy
‘I saw you cheated’
(28) lhe aguento mais (M-30L Martinho urban)
Now no 3SG.DAT. 1SG.PRES.bear more
‘I can’t stand you anymore’
(29) lhe quero ver mais (F-30L Caniço rural)
No 3SG.DAT. 1SG.PRES.want INF.see more
‘I don’t want to see you anymore’
The resource of stressed pronouns in unstressed contexts, mainly direct objects, is widely
documented in Brazil, but it has also been pointed out for Madeira by Bazenga, Andrade & da
Silva Rodrigues (2016). However, in their study, this alternative is found in people with a low
educational background. This is also the main sociolinguistic variable in my corpus, though it
has also emerged in informants with the opposite As for the dative in accusative
environments, this lhe instead of the normative accusative pronouns has also been attested in
continental Portugal as well as in Madeira with reference to a semantic third person (Segura
da Cruz 1991, Bazenga & Rodrigues 2019), but in my corpus this has occurred with reference
to você and not to any other 3sg strategy. This suggests that lhe could also appear for reasons
of politeness, imitating the model in Brazil and in Spain. Regardless of the sociolinguistic
factors that may prompt this shift, its mere existence obeys two purposes: the
differentiation between a semantic and a syntactic third person, and the promotion of the
human entity in the topical scale, conveyed by the most common grammatical case (the
dative).
The former reason can also be found in Brazilian Portuguese and Peninsular Spanish,
where the dative lhe and le, respectively, have established themselves as the unique unstressed
pronouns in third person in order to distinguish politeness and a semantic third person. By
doing so, both varieties resort to normative accusative pronouns where the entity is he or she,
but change to dative in any unstressed context when the reference is an addressee who should
be addressed politely. As a result, this variation in case responds to pragmatic motives
( 1999, De Souza & Lopes 2015, Seibane 2021).
The latter reason is a cross-linguistic tendency prompted by several semantic and
discursive grounds. (2001) pinpoints that the dative case usually conveys a human
entity, embodied in a number of semantic roles: recipient, possessor or even
dative, which the author as a conscious participant in the event, typically animate, but
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not the deliberate initiator. This last semantic role can materialise in different syntactic
functions (30-32).
(30) John knew Mary
(31) John scared Mary
(32) John talked to Mary
Instances (30-32) underlie that the element in italics is semantically a dative and,
syntactically, it can be the subject, the direct object and the indirect object. In other words: a
dative can be these three syntactic functions, but a patient or an agent cannot. Moreover, as
the dative is usually a human entity and can emerge in all those syntactic positions, it is
inclined to be conveyed by a marker, also because of discursive reasons. Again,
according to (2001), the human entity is the most salient feature in discourse, tending
to be positioned at the beginning of the speech because of a topical hierarchy that promotes
the human to the place. Furthermore, the human entity also lends itself to being referred
to in a way to follow its saliency: this means that, regardless of its syntactic function, it
may be expressed coherently and differently with regards to non-human entities. As a result,
humans may develop their own marker for any syntactic case in contrast to a different marker
for other referents.
If we compare these cross-linguistic tendencies to the dialectic realities in Madeira or
elsewhere in Brazil and Spain, it is possible to observe that all of them follow these
assumptions. Firstly, the human entity is conveyed coherently with its own marker, in this case
le in Spanish and lhe in Portuguese. Secondly, the human entity is inclined to be expressed
differently with respect to another referent even for the same syntactic functions, which is
why Spanish and some varieties of Portuguese have developed a clitic for polite third person
and another one for a non-human or semantic third person ( 1999,
Seibane 2021). Thirdly, the two of them have selected the dative case, which coincides with
the semantic role of dative and which is nearly always a human entity ( 2001).
Apart from these particularities in the object position, Madeira Portuguese has
syncretised the stressed pronoun in si (or consigo when the preposition is com ‘with’) within a
prepositional phrase to refer to non-T forms: 176 times in contrast with 26 occurrences of
stressed pronouns homophonous to the subject form. Nonetheless, the usage of si is only 3sg
and cannot refer to a plural entity. The relevance of si is the fact that it is useful for você and o
senhor / a senhora, again the problematic feature of singular pronouns that are not
tu. By resorting to si, speakers avoid the explicit production of the address, which may only
arise as the subject. This applies to noun phrases and null subject plus 3sg too. The most
important pragmatic decision nowadays in the singular in syntactic terms is the production of
the subject, while si has been applied in the prepositional phrase as a solution in this
grammatical context.
5.4.2.Extension of the 3pl anchoring vocês
In the previous paragraphs, I highlighted the fact that, even though vocês is syntactically
3pl, European Portuguese is characterised by exhibiting agreement mismatches between the
pronoun, verb and (3pl) and possessives and objects (2pl). This does not happen in
Brazilian Portuguese where vocês systematically induces 3pl, but Portugal also presents
different extension of the 3pl, depending on the geographical area. In the case of Madeira, in
Table 13 I depict the distribution of agreement referring to vocês.
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Table 13. Vocês and its agreements
STRESSED PRONOUN REFLEXIVE VERB ACCUSATIVE DATIVE POSSESSIVE
311 3pl (100%) 79 3pl (100%) 316 3pl (100%) 89 2pl (80%)
22 3pl (20%)
99 2pl (94%)
6 3pl (6%)
47 2pl (96%)
2 3pl (4%)
Table 13 pinpoints that any syntactic element anchoring vocês is coherently in
3pl as long as it is the subject, the and the verb. The rest of the elements swing
between the 2pl and the 3pl, but not to the same degree. Whereas the accusative gives more
occurrences of 3pl (though the 2pl is the major one), there is more reluctance towards the
dative as regards 3pl and, the possessive hardly in 3pl. It must be stated that
the prepositional phrase has also given vocês as the preferred stressed pronoun, except when
it is preceded by the preposition com (‘with’). In this case, the usage of the 3pl is 86% (19
times), and the strategy convosco¸ syntactically 2pl, appears 3 times (14%).
The picture provided with by the data clearly establishes that Madeira follows the same
pattern as continental Portugal, since the 3pl undergoes a hierarchy: subject > verb /
> accusative > dative > possessive. The behaviour of the accusative allows for
analysing the path transited by the 3pl, since it starts emerging in this case when the pronoun
is enclitic (10 times in 3pl versus 15 times 2pl) while there is a leaning towards proclisis in 2pl
(10 times 3pl versus 74 times 2pl) (33-34).
(33) quero
Now no 1SG.PRES.want
mais (M+60H Camacha, rural)
INF.see+3PL.ACC. more
‘I don’t want to see you anymore’
(34) vos tinha avisado que
Now 2PL.ACC. 1SG.PST.have PCP.warn. that
isto ia acontecer (F-30H Caniço rural)
this 3SG.PST.go INF.happen
‘I had already warned you that this was going to happen’
The rise of the 3pl in enclitic accusatives in my corpus has been mainly produced after an
The concatenation of the sound /r/ plus the sound /v/ might have been a phonetic
context that has triggered the conversion of the 2pl into a 3pl. This hypothesis is supported by
an analogous phenomenon witnessed in Spanish in the 16th century. According to
Campos (2010), the current 2pl unstressed pronoun is os and not vos as it was in the Middle
Ages, because the pronunciation of the sequence /r/+/v/, such as the one in Portuguese,
produced the gradual loss of /v/ in these contexts. Once vos turned itself into os whenever it
followed an /r/, speakers ended up generalising os in every situation regardless of the
phonological constraints. But the shift of vos into os commenced in these
phonological sequences. The same seems to apply to the establishment of the 3pl in the
accusative in Portuguese.
However, this shift is attested in the accusative, since the same speakers that
preferred 3pl in the accusative after /r/ did not produce a 3pl in the dative after /r/.
Therefore, the spread of the 3pl must necessarily undergo the abovementioned hierarchy. This
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continuum is not arbitrary either, but it responds to the grammatical behaviour that many
phenomena follow when they are subject to grammatical case (Blake 2004). For instance,
causativisation, passivisation and relativisation are also constrained by this hierarchy (Comrie
1976, Keenan & Comrie 1977). English can make a passive out of an indirect object (dative)
because it can do so out of a direct object (accusative). The languages capable of relativising a
genitive (whose) can do so because they are able to relativise the subject, the direct object and
the indirect object. Hence, the extension of the 3pl in vocês obeys this same feature and can
even have a counterpart in Andalusian Spanish, where the spread of the 3pl referring to the
pronoun ustedes runs across this same hierarchy at the expense of the 2pl that refers to the
eliminated pronoun vosotros (Lara Bermejo 2018a, 2020a).
5.4.3. The loss of vós
The loss of vós as 2pl has already been discussed: the scarcity of speakers who have
expressed it in expected contexts is proof of this fact. But this tendency can even be
underpinned by the agreement pattern referring to the stressed form, for not all informants
expressed a verb in 2pl right after the subject, but two of them preferred a 3pl agreement,
suggesting again that vocês has virtually established itself as the plural pronoun in any T and N
situation (35-36). It is pertinent to recall that only ten people produced vós, so 20% them are
already spreading the 3pl even with this referent.
(35) o futuro
2PL.NOM. 3PL.PRES.be the future
da igreja (M30-60L Santana rural)
of+the church
‘You are the future of the church’
(36) sois o futuro da igreja e
2PL.NOM. 2PL.PRES.be the future of+the church and
desejo que sigam uma
1SG.PRES.wish that 3PL.PRES.follow a
vida (F+60L Porto Moniz rural)
life Christian
‘You are the future of the church and I wish you to follow a Christian life’
The instances pinpoint the grammatical instability of vós, as a proportion of the few
speakers who resorted to it were not coherent in agreeing on all the elements in 2pl. While
(35) already enables the verb in 3pl right after the treatment, (36) shows that, despite the
verb in 2pl, the second prefers the 3pl though its referent is the same one. This
apparent contradiction, according to Corbett (2006), responds to a change in progress that
opposes two different agreements. The extension of one of them at the expense of the other
reveals the deletion of the latter. However, this process entails not only gradualness, but the
coexistence of the new agreement with the one which is being ousted. This is exactly what
(35-36) suggest.
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6. CONCLUSIONS
This article represents a considerable breakthrough in Portuguese and politeness studies,
mainly referring to Madeira. The lack of in-depth research regarding actual data on one of the
most complex phenomena in Lusophone linguistics is still an incognita that is being slowly
unveiled. Thanks to this study, it is possible to analyse the current reality in the Madeira
archipelago. I summarise the main achievements below.
The study carried out has shown that present day Madeira exhibits a politeness
paradigm that resembles that of continental Portugal, but with a few divergences. Even though
it possesses a tripartite system in singular and a bipartite one in plural, no archaic form
whatsoever has been elicited and the pronoun você in singular has appeared very frequently.
Nevertheless, this usage coexists with that of null subject and noun phrases for N situations,
although every now and then it has also appeared in the addressing of someone in a higher
position and more frequently in the addressing of someone in a lower position, when the
relation between the participants was asymmetrical. In any case, there is a preference for the
explicit subject rather than the avoidance thereof, irrespective of the choice for a pronoun or a
noun phrase.
From a geolinguistic point of view, the main characteristic resides in the extension of the
3pl referring to vocês, for it has already shifted onto the accusative in the east and some parts
of southern Madeira, while it is also attested in the dative in Porto Santo and other areas
within populated areas of Madeira. It is in Funchal and its surroundings where the 3pl can also
emerge in the possessive, completely ousting any remnance of 2pl.
The sociolinguistic study has revealed that men tend to employ você more and that the
elderly are more inclined to consider the family as a hierarchical entity. However, pragmatic
solidarity has increased in the plural, for vocês covers the majority of contexts to the detriment
of os senhores. Likewise, the usage of vós for reverential contexts such as church is in clear
disuse by favouring the resort to vocês, and the knowledge of the proper name of the
interlocutor turns out to be essential in order to express a subject in situations where no
pronoun is considered adequate.
From a grammatical perspective, the extension of the 3pl anchoring vocês follows a
continuum that obeys cross-linguistic phenomena, but the establishment of the 3pl in
the accusative seems to be brought about by phonetic reasons. Moreover, in si speakers have
syncretised the pronoun to be employed in a prepositional phrase, regardless of whether it
refers to você or o senhor.
Acknowledgments
I am deeply grateful to Professor Aline Bazenga, from University of Madeira, whose
support has been crucial for the success of this research. Her commitment to
informants and to making my stay as comfortable and productive as possible is priceless and
will never be rewarded as deserved. This paper is dedicated to her and, last but not least, to all
the people who took part directly and indirectly in the survey.
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