Diachronic study of pronoun placement in verbal complexes in BP and EP writing (XIX and XX centuries)

This article deals with the issue of placement of clitic “se” in verbal complex in Brazilian and European samples. It works with writing ‘editorials', ‘news' and ‘announcements' produced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries . Based on Labovian sociolinguistics, it develops the processing of the data provided by Goldvarb -X. This work investigates, then, the trajectories of different kinds of “se”, to attest the possible similarities and differences between Brazilian and European writings. Moreover, it verifies that the behavior of the data reflects the existence of a variable rule. Thus, we analyze the possible favoring linguistic constraints of “cl V1 V2 (se pode fazer)”, “V1-cl V2 (pode-se fazer)”, “V1 cl V2 (pode se fazer)” and “V1 V2-cl (pode fazer-se)”. It is observed that the writing sometimes doesn't differ the standards as the absolute initial context period/sentence in that refuses proclisis to V1 in both samples, and also to participial complexes, that do not register enclitic data to V2. The Brazilian and European standards written resemble specifically in the case of “se indeterminador” in both studied centuries. On the other hand, the use of “se reflexivo” seems to be the central issue in differentiating the two studied standards. While Brazilian seems to associate their choices to the types of “se”, in that “reflexivo” tends to adjacent to V2 (including in proclisis) and “indeterminador” figures adjacent to V1, European do it more smoothly and seems to relate their choices also to the form of the main verb and to the presence of “proclisador”, especially with “indeterminador”. The performance of “proclisador” with “se reflexivo” is also lenient in PE, but a little more effective than in BP. At the end of the twentieth century, the differences show up even more when it is registered a proclisis to V2 increase in Brazil. In EP the variant is not employed.