(Nasalization of a final vowel is the most general third person verbal plural marker.) The analytical problems in each case are to separate the effects of the syntactic and phonological rules, and specify the constraints on each. Interacting with this is a variable phonological rule denasalizing final vowels (ontem (->) onte). fez-fizeram-are more likely to be plural-marked than those with less alient differences-e.g. This is constrained mainly by subject position (immediately pre-verbal subjects favor agreement more than distant or postponed subjects) and by morphological class of the verb (verbs with a more salient difference between singular and plural-e.g. Second, there is variation in subject-verb number agreement, so that plural subjects often co-occur with singular verbs. meno for menos)-which happens to be the main nominal plural marker.
Interacting with this is a variable phonological rule deleting final S (producing, e.g. First, there is variation in nominal plural marking, constrained mainly by position of a word in the NP, so that the first word is almost always marked, but subsequent words are rarely marked. The variables in question are two cases where phonology and syntax interact. This dissertation presents a quantitative analysis of a group of linguistic variables in Brazilian Portuguese, and uses the results to attack several problems in the history of the language, and in the theory of linguistic variation. GREGORY RIORDAN GUY, University of Pennsylvania LINGUISTIC VARIATION IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE: ASPECTS OF THE PHONOLOGY, SYNTAX, AND LANGUAGE HISTORY
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