The "língua desportuguesa". Proclisis in Angolan Portuguese and Mozambican Portuguese

Abstract

The expansion of proclisis in contexts that typically exclude it in European Portuguese has been described as a syntactic feature that characterizes Angolan Portuguese. This article studies the presence of this feature in the literary language, based on a corpus of texts by Angolan
and Mozambican authors, representing two generations: authors born in the colonial period (the Angolan Pepetela and the Mozambicans Mia Couto and Paulina Chiziane) and authors born after the independence of their countries (the Angolan Ondjaki and the Mozambican Lucílio Manjate). The study results show that proclisis has a stronger presence in the works of Angolan authors than Mozambican authors, suggesting that the shift towards the generalization of proclisis is more advanced, socially widespread and accepted in Angolan Portuguese than in Mozambican Portuguese, although it is visible in both. It is in non-finite domains that the contrast between the two African varieties is more evident. Not only is the frequency of proclisis to the infinitive higher in the Angolan Portuguese corpus, but only there is proclisis to the past participle attested. Comparing the two generations of writers, we see a significant rise of proclisis to the infinitive between Pepetela and Ondjaki and it is in Ondjaki’s works that proclisis to the past participle occurs. Regarding the Mozambican Portuguese corpus, however, there seems to be a regression in the advance of proclisis between Mia Couto and Manjate. A closer look at Rabhia, by Manjate (2017), suggests that young speakers with a high level of education may perceive the spread of proclisis as a socially marked feature.