On the presence and absence of definite articles with anthroponyms in rural varieties of Madeiran Portuguese

Abstract

European Portuguese (EP) generally manifests a systematic use of the definite article with anthroponyms in communicative immediacy (in the sense of Koch & Oesterreicher, 1986). In Brazilian Portuguese (BP), there is a well-documented variation in the use of determiners in these contexts. A vast body of literature on this phenomenon in BP varieties shows that –among other internal factors– the extralinguistic factor of proximity between speaker and referent crucially affects the usage of the definite article with anthroponyms (cf. Amaral, 2007; Callou & Silva, 1997; Campos Júnior, 2010; de Carvalho, 2017; Lima & Moraes, 2019).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.