Personal uses of impersonalizing strategies: Hybrid constructions with a gente and se in rural Madeiran Portuguese Varieties

Abstract

The varieties of Portuguese spoken in Madeira present a predominant use of a gente, a grammaticalized first person plural pronoun, derived from the noun phrase ‘the people’, instead of the traditional pronoun nós. They also exhibit constructions where a gente cooccurs with the impersonal clitic se. In a pioneering study, Martins (2009) provides a detailed description of what she calls “double subject impersonal constructions” and proposes that a gente restricts the generic interpretation of the clitic se. Based on spoken data from sem Show more