An analysis of asymmetries in subject personal pronoun usage in brazilian portuguese and spanish

Résumé

The main purpose of this article is to reflect on first-person personal pronoun usage in Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish. Although both languages allow null subjects (Chomsky, 1981), the strategies used by Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish speakers differ regarding overt subject pronoun expression. First, we review the literature on personal pronouns in pro-drop languages from a syntactic perspective (Barbosa et al., 2005; Duarte, 2000; Fernández Soriano, 2000). Then, we examine these constructions in both languages taking into account the theoretical contributions of textual linguistics and pragmatics (Davidson, 1996; Leonetti, 2014; Padilla García, 2001; Stewart, 2003). Finally, we qualitatively examine the use of first-person subject pronouns in excerpts from interviews published in newspapers in Spain and Brazil, whose central theme is the COVID-19 pandemic.