European Portuguese (EP) generally manifests a systematic use of the definite article with anthroponyms in communicative immediacy (in the sense of
This paper analyses the variable use of definite articles preceding anthroponyms in rural varieties of Madeiran Portuguese (MP) in contexts of communicative immediacy. The results of a qualitative and quantitative analysis based on a corpus of semi-directed interviews and free conversations between elderly rural speakers, suggest that in MP rural varieties, anthroponyms may occur without definite articles in communicative immediacy contexts. Furthermore, building on the findings of previous studies regarding the significance of the factor of proximity between speaker and alluded individual, this study proposes a categorization of intersubjective proximity considering different types of kinship and social relations. Thus, the data suggest that along this continuum of proximity, anthroponyms alluding to members of the nuclear family most commonly occur without definite articles in rural MP varieties.
The variable use of the definite article preceding anthroponyms is a well-known phenomenon in Romance languages. Due to their referential and grammatical properties, anthroponyms do not need a definite article for their actualization. In those Romance languages displaying variation between the presence and the omission of the definite article in these contexts, there is a vast scope of different possible interpretations that these variants entail. Portuguese is known to display a particular case of article usage with personal proper names. Following Raposo and Nascimento (
Interestingly, it is in discursive immediacy contexts that rural Madeiran Portuguese (MP) varieties manifest a variable use of the definite article with anthroponyms. This phenomenon of variation has been broadly documented for various Brazilian Portuguese (BP) varieties; however, it has not yet been described for MP.
(1)
A: O pai nunca trabalhou com
‘(Dad), did you ever work with A_PPN(M)?’
B: Não!
‘No!’
(2)
C: O
‘A_PPN(M), he withdrew the money when A_PPN(F) wasn’t around.’
These illustrative examples stem from the same conversation but were uttered by different informants who have different relationships with the alluded individual A_PPN(M). In example (1), a conversation between the daughter (speaker A) and her parents (speakers B and C), A asks her father (speaker B) whether he had worked with her cousin A_PPN(M) before. Later in the conversation, the mother (speaker C) explains why her husband would not want to work with their nephew A_PPN(M). The reason, illustrated in example (2), is that A_PPN(M) had stolen money from his mother, A_PPN(F), C’s sister. Considering the kinship relations between the speakers and the alluded individuals in this particular conversation, two primary observations can be made: i) speaker A refers to her cousin A_PPN(M) without using a determiner, and ii) speaker C refers to the same individual by using the definite article before his proper name. However, when referring to her sister A_PPN(F), C omits the article. A considerable number of previous studies has already shown that the variable use of the definite article insinuates different attitudes of the speaker towards the person mentioned by their name and thus might reflect the intersubjective proximity between speaker and referent (cf.
Considering the findings of the forecited studies on BP varieties, the present study focuses on the extralinguistic factor of proximity and its influence on the variable use of the definite article with anthroponyms in MP. This phenomenon of variation has been left unaccounted for in previous studies on EP regional and insular varieties. Therefore, this paper’s primary goal is to shed light on this thus far undocumented phenomenon.
The present study is structured as follows: the following section introduces the corpus and methodology used in this study. Section 3 describes the discourse-pragmatic features of anthroponyms. This description is followed by a synoptic overview of studies on the definite article preceding anthroponyms in some Ibero-Romance languages to identify prevalent shared patterns and to visualize the role assigned to proximity in terms of the variation under investigation. Finally, section 5 presents an approach to analysing intersubjective proximity between the speaker and the referent based on a categorization of kinship and other types of social relations. Final observations and schemes for future studies are summarized in the conclusion.
To date, there are only two available corpora enabling the study of morphosyntactic variation in MP varieties: the corpus CORDIAL-SIN
In light of these limitations that hinder the occurrence of anthroponyms in the corpora mentioned above, this study relies on two different sources of linguistic data: 16 semi-directed interviews and six free conversations between members of the same family, friends, or neighbours. The interviews were generally carried out with one informant; however, as expected, anthroponyms commonly occur when another participant is present with whom the speaker is familiar. This was the case in three interviews.
The free conversations between individuals who know each other complete the semi-directed interviews in that they effectively compensate for these gaps. In order to promote the most natural environment, the informants were not given any instructions or conversation guide. Although this strategy proved to be very efficient in propagating the appearance of anthroponyms, the mere presence of a recording device indubitably influenced the speaker’s linguistic behaviour. Once the conversation ended, I proceeded to ask the informants about their intersubjective relationship with the referents who had been mentioned. Despite these efforts, some anthroponyms remained unclassifiable and were therefore excluded from the analysis (cf. Section 5).
Based on the observation that the omission of the definite article with anthroponyms is most commonly found in rural PM varieties, spoken by elderly speakers, this study only includes informants who roughly meet the standards known by the acronym NORM (non-mobile, rural, old, male) (
Three types of anthroponyms were extracted from both subsamples: forenames (3), nicknames (4), and a combination of forenames and surnames, as illustrated in example (5). Nevertheless, the last two types of anthroponyms account for only 15 of the anthroponyms in the data, so that they could not be considered independent variables in the present analysis.
(3)
Depois
‘Afterwards, A_PPN(F) finally cooked something for him.’
(4)
Vou por cima que’o maldito do
‘I’ll go over the hill because the damn C_NN(M) is there!’
(5)
[Es]tava falando c’o
‘She was talking to M_PPN(M) + LN.’
Among the excluded cases were also anthroponyms preceded by determiners other than definite articles, such as demonstratives (6) or indefinite pronouns (7).
(6)
Era irmã
‘She was this
(7)
Eu não conhecia
‘I did not know any other J_PPN(M)+ LN.’
Furthermore, only cases of the sequence [(definite article) + anthroponyms] were considered. Thus, anthroponyms preceded by common nouns were excluded from the analysis.
(8)
Ele não ouve
‘He does not listen to aunt A_PPN(F).’
(9)
[…]
‘[…] Mr. M_PPN(M) in Funchal does not have his door like this’
A total of 26 occurrences of anthroponyms were excluded from the original data set, leaving 399 relevant occurrences with and without the definite article. Before turning to the analysis of the remaining 399 tokens, a description of the properties displayed by anthroponyms will be provided in section 3, followed by some remarks on the extension of the variable use of definite articles with anthroponyms in Ibero-Romance varieties.
Anthroponyms are commonly subsumed under the category of proper names. As opposed to common names, proper names are known to be univocal items (
Example (10) illustrates a case of ambiguous reference, which is based on the fact that even though both interlocutors share the same knowledge about the bearer of the anthroponym A_PPN(M), who is speaker A’s cousin and B’s brother, they do not share the information coded in the predication: the fact that he has a girlfriend. The strategy applied here –i.e., the use of an article-less postnominal possessive pronoun such as
(10)
A: Olha, e
‘(Look), so does A_PPN(M) have a girlfriend then?’
B:
‘Our A_PPN(M)?’
It is worth noting, however, that the generally univocal connection between a proper name and its referent (the person or entity who bears or is known by a specific name) can be altered in certain contexts resulting in non-prototypical uses. In those cases, the proper name maintains its referential properties but loses the characteristic of the univocal reference discussed above. In this sense, in a sentence like
In view of what has been mentioned so far, anthroponyms and proper names alike have been shown to be monoreferential and inherently definite linguistic elements. Definite articles, on the other hand, usually indicate that the referent of the noun is known to speech act participants, being thus characterized as definite within the scope of the respective discourse (cf.
In several Ibero-Romance languages, the variable use of the definite article with personal proper names in their referential functions entails a range of different discourse-pragmatic values. This section will provide a short overview of the possible interpretations of the two available variants –with and without article– based on previous studies. The purpose of this synopsis is twofold. Firstly, it shows that there are recurrent factors at work conditioning the use of definite articles with anthroponyms, which materialize in different marking patterns across these varieties. Secondly, it outlines differences and similarities in terms of the use of the definite article in these contexts and ultimately allows us to position the variation found in the rural MP varieties within the frame of Ibero-Romance languages.
Standard Spanish presents a canonical use of personal proper names without definite articles (
Another recurrent observation regarding the use of definite articles with anthroponyms is its association with rural varieties. In a study on the use of the article with anthroponyms in cultured speech from ten cities
The notoriety of the referent is another reiterated factor promoting the use of definite articles across all social groups (cf.
In terms of the extralinguistic factor of intersubjective proximity, De Mello (
Referring to the discourse-pragmatic aspects of this construction in Spanish varieties, most linguists claim that the presence of the article endows the anthroponym with additive connotative values of disdain. However, in his forecited analysis on urban varieties, De Mello refutes this widely held premise by concluding that the affective reading is the most productive one in the pan-Hispanic sample analysed (
As for Catalan, Andrés Díaz (
(11)
Aquest és
‘This (one) is Jordi.’
(12)
‘Mireia laughed like a lunatic.’
(
More recent studies have referred to these special types of determiners as “preproprial” or “proprial” articles (cf.
In his study on the use of the article with personal first names in present-day Galician, Sousa Fernández (
(13)
O Xan é o noso veciño.
‘Xoán [sic] is our neighbour.’
(14)
Ao Miguel collérono preso.
‘They took Miguel prisoner.’
(15)
Os bens do Miguel.
‘Miguel’s property.’
(
These findings for southern Galician varieties coincide with those for Portuguese, which will be discussed in the following subsection.
Portuguese varieties display a high degree of complexity concerning the use of definite articles with personal proper names. Grammarians such as Cunha and Cintra (
As far as diatopic variation within EP varieties is concerned, I am not aware of any studies addressing the variable use of definite articles with anthroponyms. However, a vast body of variationist sociolinguistic studies find regional differences within BP varieties. Callou and Silva (
Based on the comparison of two speech samples –one from Curitiba located in the southern state of Santa Catarina and another from João Pessoa in the north-eastern state of Paraiba– Menon (
As mentioned in the introduction to the present paper, proximity is an often-cited factor in the literature on this phenomenon (cf.
This chapter has provided an overview of the variable use of the definite article in Ibero-Romance varieties. Previous research has shown a widespread presence of this variation, whose variants may differ in their pragmatic-discursive values according to the variety they occur in. Variationist sociolinguistic studies suggest that there are several linguistic and extralinguistic factors at play determining this variation. Regarding the latter, the speaker’s origin and the proximity between the speaker and the bearer of the mentioned anthroponym, are among the most cited ones. As stated by Amaral and Seide (
The overwhelming number of studies on BP varieties contrasts with the complete absence of research on this variation in EP varieties. The only instances of the use of the article preceding anthroponyms are found in grammars (
As has been shown, standard EP displays a generalized use of the definite article in informal and “immediate” spoken communication (cf.
(16)
‘M_PPN(M) picked up R_PPN(M), but J_PPN(F) was still there.’
In example (16), the informant tells her sister about an incident that happened at her house while her daughter (J_PPN(F)), her son-in-law (M_PPN(M)) and their son (R_PPN(M)) were visiting. The example illustrates that, while some anthroponyms are preceded by the definite article (M_PPN(M)), others lack the determiner.
The divergent marking of different anthroponyms becomes even more obvious, when considering conversations in which different speakers mention the same individual by their name, as in the example below:
(17)
A:
A: ‘Does A_PPN(M) make up a lot of things?’
B:
B: ‘A_PPN(M) said that it was F_PPN(M) that did everything!’
Example (17) shows how different interlocutors refer to the same referents using different variants of the constructions under study. For instance, while speaker A refers to her cousin A_PPN(M) without the article, her interlocutor B mentions the same individual using the definite article. One probable explanation for this inter-speaker variation seems to be the different relationship each speaker has with the mentioned individual.
In what follows, I claim that this inter-speaker variation has its basis in different intersubjective relationship types between the speakers and the alluded referent. Before exploring how intersubjective proximity influences the use of the definite article, the next subsection provides a general description of the phenomenon in the data under study. Then, to account for the inter-speaker variation illustrated in the examples in (17) above, a categorization based on six types of kinship and other social relations between informants and mentioned individuals is used. Lastly, I conclude this section with some observations on the factor of shared knowledge between speaker and interlocutor, which seems to be linked to the factor of intersubjective proximity.
The data show that, contrary to what was observed for standard EP varieties, rural MP varieties display a relatively high frequency of anthroponyms without articles in the explored contexts. Of the 399 anthroponyms analysed in the corpus, 44.9% were cases of the variant without the definite article. This approximate balance between the two variants in an exclusively oral and informal speech corpus suggests that MP seems to deviate significantly from the constraints in standard EP concerning article omission. Recall that the data stems from semi-directed interviews with mostly one interviewee and free conversations between speakers who know each other.
The following table summarizes the proportions of the data under analysis.
The results illustrated in
Analysed data according to data sample and presence or absence of the definite article.
def. article + anthroponym | 88/125 | 132/274 | 48.2% | |
Ø + anthroponym | 37/125 | 29.6% | 142/274 | |
total | 125/399 | 274/399 |
Another possible explanation for the imbalance between occurrences of anthroponyms in the two subsamples under study could be the inherently asymmetrical communicative situation of interviews. The dynamics of the interviews are defined by the fact that the interviewer and the interviewee do not tend to be on familiar terms with each other. This asymmetry is furthermore associated with the lack of shared knowledge between the interlocutors. Thus, when speaking about their family, informants of semi-directed interviews will most likely refer to family members by using kinship names –i.e., “my sister”– or by using their personal proper names postponed to a kinship name –i.e., “my sister Mary”.
Before considering this aspect in section 5.3., the next section addresses the main focus of this analysis by shedding light onto the often-cited factor of intersubjective proximity and its influence in the omission or presence of the definite article.
Due to the highly complex nature of intersubjective relations, previous studies have relied on different indirect approaches to operationalize this factor. Some approaches (cf.
Other studies analyse the factor of proximity based on the degree of public renown of the referent; that is, the more famous the mentioned individual, the less likely it is that they pertain to the speaker’s social network (
These indirect approaches to intersubjective proximities lead to several difficulties: Firstly, inferring the proximity from the type of anthroponym being used does not seem very fruitful since, as mentioned above, the asymmetric communicative context of interviews, could lead to forms of mentioning individuals that would not normally occur in more natural communicative contexts. Secondly, by deducing the degree of proximity from the degree of notoriety of the referent, linguistic analysis fails to consider the perspective of the speaker.
In this analysis, the degree of intersubjective proximity is defined as a continuum ranging from referents who belong to the speaker’s nuclear family [+proximity] to people whom the informants regard as not pertaining to their close social network [–proximity]. I propose a more direct approach of operationalizing this factor by categorizing the mentioned individuals in terms of their relationship with the speaker. This information was gathered while collecting the data. The informants were queried about their relationships to the mentioned individuals after the conversations or interviews. However, some of the anthroponyms could still not be categorized according to this variable, as suggest the 21 occurrences subsumed in the category “N.A.” (not available) in
Anthroponyms with and without article according to relationship type.
with def. article | 94 | 91.3% | 105 | 39.8% | 5 | 55.6% | 17 | 81.0% |
without def. article | 9 | 8.7% | 159 | 60.2% | 4 | 44.4% | 4 | 19.0% |
Note that the data summarized in
Before breaking down the types of relationships in more detail, it should be noted that most of the mentioned anthroponyms belong to the speakers’ family members. Moreover,
(18)
A: No ano passado,
‘A: Last year, J_PPN(F) bought two cases of beans and sent a bag there.’
(19)
B: Eu acho a
‘I think J_PPN(F) is fat.’
These two examples were extracted from different conversations by different speakers mentioning the same person J_PPN(F). In (18) it is her mother mentioning J_PPN(F). Example (19) however, is uttered by her neighbour. These examples show the necessity of using a more fine-grained categorization. In previous studies, both examples would have been assigned a high level of proximity and the variation could not be accounted for. Moreover, as shown in
Use of definite articles with anthroponyms of relatives and individuals pertaining to the social network of the speakers.
Accordingly,
Individuals of the social network of the speaker: 1 = close friends; 2 = neighbours and colleagues; 3 = acquaintances.
Relatives of the speaker: A = nuclear family; B = extended family; C = kinship by affinity.
While the subgroups within the set of individuals pertaining to the speaker’s social network (cf.
Furthermore, it should be noted that this categorization takes into account the change of perspective assumed in reported speech situations, given the variable use of the definite article depending on the relationship of the quoted individual to the referent mentioned (see example (20)):
(20)
Ele dizia: “Ir, que
‘He would say: “Go, C_PPN(F) can give you some of that!” My mother’s name was C_PPN(F).’
In (20), the informant quotes her father (resumed by the 3SG pronoun
The subdivision of both groups of referents –social network and relatives– into subcategories depicts more clearly the scalar nature of proximity between referent and speaker.
As far as the social network (cf.
Anthroponyms of individuals pertaining to the social network.
Relatives of the speaker.
These findings confirm the hypothesis that intersubjective proximity between speakers and referents does indeed correlate with the usage of definite articles with anthroponyms. Resuming the idea of a possible continuum, it can be said that persons with whom the speakers do not share any kind of kinship or close social relationship would comprise the far end of the continuum. These are the bearers of the anthroponyms categorized in groups 3 and C, figuring high levels of usage of the determiner. On the opposite side of the spectrum are members of the nuclear family of the speaker, whose anthroponyms most commonly appear without the definite article.
Continuum of intersubjective proximity.
This continuum attempts to illustrate the effects of the factor “intersubjective proximity” and the morphosyntactic variation shown in the results of the present study. However, it does not account for the 16.4% of anthroponyms with definite articles categorized in group A (“nuclear family”). To account for these cases, I will make some observations on the importance of shared knowledge between interlocutors and other factors that exceed the scope of this paper.
The contrast between the interviews and the free conversations allows us to further investigate how shared knowledge between speech act participants influences linguistic behaviour. As stated in section 5.1. two thirds of the occurrences of anthroponyms in the data stem from the sample of free conversations. Furthermore, as illustrated in
Silva (
In light of Silva’s observations and taking the present study into account, it is important to address the deviances from the observed general tendencies. Among the 24 cases (16.4%) displaying definite articles with anthroponyms of individuals pertaining to group A (“nuclear family”), 18 are occurrences extracted from the subsample of semi-directed interviews in which the informant is speaking to the unknown interviewer. This observation leads us to the conclusion that despite the high degree of intersubjective proximity, the speaker tends to use definite articles with anthroponyms unknown to their interlocutor.
(21)
E os rapazes também [es]tavam; o
‘The boys were also there; J_PPN(M) and M_PPN(M).’
(22)
‘J_PPN(M) was born here.’
Examples (21) and (22) are extracted from the same interview and uttered by the same speaker. The first example was directed to the interviewer, hence the presence of definite article when naming her brothers “
These observations seem to be indicative of the importance of shared knowledge. Even though this factor might propose a useful explanation for seemingly divergent cases displaying unexpected uses of definite articles –i.e., with anthroponyms of members of the nuclear family– it does not solve the whole puzzle. The following example shows a case of intra-speaker variation that one would not expect due to the factors of proximity and shared knowledge.
(23)
Ela falou no
‘She mentioned M_PPN(M); [she mentioned] that J_PPN(M) went with M_PPN(M).’
Example (23) shows two mentions of the same anthroponym (M_PPN(M)) –with and without the article– uttered by the same speaker talking to her sister about her grandsons M_PPN(M) and J_PPN(M). Neither intersubjective proximity nor shared knowledge can account for this unexpected intra-speaker variation. Hence, other possibly linguistic explanations are called for. One possible explanation could lie in the use of the preposition
Example (23) shows that both of the extralinguistic factors considered in the present study cannot explain the whole range of variability regarding this phenomenon. Thus, linguistic factors, such as phono-syntactic processes, other co-textual factors and syntactic functions will have to be considered in future studies to complete the picture of this phenomenon.
The present research paper has focused on the variable use of the definite article based on oral speech data from elderly speakers of rural MP varieties with low educational levels. In order to analyse whether this variation is also found within other social groups, further research is needed. Notwithstanding, the findings of this article shed light on a morphosyntactic phenomenon that has gone undetected by linguists working on dialectal varieties of EP thus far. Previous studies on this phenomenon in other Ibero-Romance varieties have shown that, among other factors, the degree of proximity between speaker and referent (intersubjective proximity) has a crucial effect on the morphosyntactic marking of anthroponyms in discourse. In those analyses, various indirect approaches were considered to deduce the intersubjective proximity between speaker and individual being mentioned (i.e., the type of anthroponym or the degree of notoriety of the referent). The present analysis, however, sought to further investigate this factor by categorizing each anthroponym according to the speakers’ reported relationship to the mentioned individuals. This approach has allowed a more fine-grained description of the effects, showing divergencies in the marking of anthroponyms of individuals within the same groups (i.e., social network and relatives, see
The present study, furthermore, reflects on the biases of different methods of data collection. The fact that interlocutors –interviewer and interviewee– are not on familiar terms with each other restricts the overall occurrence of anthroponyms and might influence the use of the definite article. However, the data under analysis, comprising both semi-directed interviews and free conversation samples between family members, friends, and neighbours, successfully tackle this bias. Some primordial observations could be made on the shared knowledge between speech act participants. Apart from promoting the occurrence of anthroponyms in general, the common knowledge between speaker and interlocutor also seems to influence the variation between the presence or absence of definite articles in these contexts.
Future research on the variable use of definite articles in EP varieties will have to address the influence of linguistic factors in order to further define this variation.
I would like to express my appreciation and gratitude to all the informants who kindly agreed to participate. I also wish to thank two anonymous reviewers, Johannes Kabatek and Carlota de Benito Moreno for their insightful comments on previous versions of this paper. Any remaining misconceptions or errors are my own responsibility.
Apart from the primary referential use, considered in the present study, Raposo and Nascimento (
All examples of MP in this text are taken from oral interviews recorded with the informants’ permission. All informants gave their consent verbally before the registration. The identity of the participants is anonymized. To guarantee the anonymization of the data, the mentioned anthroponyms are replaced by their initial letter and the abbreviation “PPN” for personal proper names or “NN” for nicknames, followed by the gender of the anthroponym (F/M). The label “LN” has been used as a place holder for last names (i.e., surnames). For example: “Jane” = J_PPN(F); “Jane Doe” = J_PPN(F) + LN.
It is worth noting that in Portuguese the definite article may contract with enclosing elements, especially with prepositions. For instance, in example (1) reproduced here as (i), the preposition
(i) O pai nunca trabalhou ‘(Dad), you never worked with A_PPN(M)?’
(ii) Será que ele dá-se bem ‘(I wonder if) he gets along with F_PPN(M)?’
The definite article might well also be subject to other assimilation phenomena. For example, with anthroponyms whose onsets are homophonic with the feminine (
The consideration of these factors requires a more detailed phonetically or experimentally (
Even though this paper focuses exclusively on the analysis of the extralinguistic factor of proximity, this should not be taken to deny the importance of other linguistic factors. Previous studies on this variation in Romance languages have pointed out the significance of factors such as gender of the anthroponym (cf.
The CORDIAL-SIN (
The
These constructions and their discourse-pragmatic properties have been subject to various linguistic analyses. Whilst some authors consider that the anthroponym maintains its prototypical referential functions, others argue against this (cf.
The cities accounted for in this study were Bogota, Buenos Aires, Caracas, La Habana, Lima, Madrid, Mexico City, San Juan (Puerto Rico), Santiago (Chile) and Sevilla (
Remember that these cases of anthroponyms were excluded from the analysis due to the polemic regarding their referential properties.
Two occurrences of auto-denomination by the speaker were excluded from this categorization. Interestingly, neither of them co-occur with definite articles.
These subgroups are based on the 11 types of interpersonal relations between speakers and referents that could be documented while compiling the data. The occurrences were classified into the following interpersonal relationships: “close friends”, “neighbours”, “colleagues”, “acquaintances”, “aunt/uncle – niece/nephew”, “grandparents – grandchildren”, “spouses”, “cousins”, “siblings”, and “kinship by affinity”.
Anthroponyms that could not be categorized or do not share any kind of relationship with the speaker –i.e., “celebrities”– and the instances of self-reference are excluded from this granular analysis.
A reviewer notes that the omission of the definite article with a possessive pronoun, as illustrated in the second sentence of example (20), could suggest that the omission of the article could be a more general phenomenon in the MP varieties under study. Even though the use of the definite articles in the domain of possessive pronouns exceeds the scope of this article, it should be noted that there are numerous instances of omission with kinship nouns such as ‘mother’ and ‘father’ in the data. Whether an analogical extension from the variable use of the definite article in possessive constructions with kinship nouns has influenced its use with anthroponyms has yet to be explored in future research on the variety under study. In their study on the use of the definite article in BP varieties, Callou and Silva (
The author has no competing interests to declare.