Brazilian Portuguese possesses two forms used as
1st person plural pronouns: nós and a
gente, both meaning ‘we’. The form nós
has always been pronominal, whereas a gente is
derived diachronically from the noun phrase a gente
‘the people’. In accord with this historical
evolution, the standard language prefers the use of the
1st plural verb desinence -mos with nós,
as in nós falamos ‘we speak’
or ‘we spoke’. The 3rd person desinence 0
is reserved for a gente, giving a gente fala
‘we speak’ as the preferred form. In popular
speech both nós fala and a gente falamos
are used frequently. We examine the use of these variable
forms across four generations in Rio de Janeiro. In the
older generations, phonic salience is the principal controlling
factor for both nós and a gente.
Since preterit desinences are stressed more frequently
than present desinences, this induces a biased surface
distribution, with -mos occurring more frequently
with past tense reference. Nonetheless, for older speakers
tense does not play a statistically significant role. In
younger speakers, tense becomes statistically significant
as a determining factor in the use of the desinences, with
preterit favoring -mos for both subject forms.
So far, there has been no change in the grammar itself,
but the locus of determination of the use of -mos
seems to have shifted from saliency to tense across the
generations. One can speculate that some time in the future
-mos may become a preterit marker.