The present paper deals with contact-induced change in existential constructions in the variety of Portuguese spoken in Cabinda, Angola. Portuguese is the official language of Angola, and the officially adopted norm is European Standard Portuguese. The focus of the analysis is on the use of the possessive verb ter ‘to have’ in existential constructions, rather than the existential haver ‘to exist’, which is the standard form in Portugal. The analysis is based on data from 40 interviews with 20 male and 20 female high school Cabinda students between 18 and 30 years of age. The aim is to investigate the role of language contact in the emergence of existential sentences with ter, as well as to verify if the use of ter in existential constructions in Cabinda has the same linguistic constraints as in Brazilian Portuguese. The paper also analyzes social factors related to multilingualism in order to discuss how social and linguistic constraints interact in shaping new varieties, such as Cabinda Portuguese. The conclusion is that the use of ter sentences as existentials in Cabinda Portuguese may be an effect resulting from the confluence of two linguistic factors: (i) changes linked with the pro-drop parameter in Portuguese emerging in Angola, and (ii) the transference of a grammatical property from Bantu languages to Portuguese, specifically, the morphological identity of possessive and existential verbs. Moreover, the only registered social influence over the presence of existential ter constructions is the level of use of Bantu languages, a finding that does not rule out that these constructions may initially have been triggered by more general acquisition effects.

In this chapter, we will focus on two set of changes reported in the literature on African and Brazilian varieties of Portuguese: (i) new uses of prepositions in directional complements of motion verbs and (ii) the emergence of ter (‘to have’) as a prototypically existential verb. Some facts involved in both changes will be presented to argue that there is a single factor responsible for triggering them in African and Brazilian Portuguese varieties: the transference of grammatical properties of phrases interpreted as locative from Bantu languages to Portuguese, with effects on the syntactic behavior of constituents introduced by the preposition em (‘in, at, on’).

This chapter introduces the idea of a continuum of Portuguese in Africa and Brazil. It further identifies the common research questions, presenting earlier studies and discussing current gaps in research about Brazilian and African varieties of Portuguese. A detailed overview of the book explains how each of the contributions works towards informing these questions. Finally, in the final remarks, the authors suggest further research questions, and put forward the necessity of developing a corpus that includes a diversity of points along the Afro-Brazilian continuum, i.e. datasets with the potential to inspire comprehensive descriptions as well as fine-tuned analyses of the linguistic properties and sociohistorical settings of the continuum. Moreover, this introduction signals the need for supplementary research on exactly which linguistic groups have cohabited where, and in which conditions, and for further exploration of the weight that each of the languages in a particular setting has had in the competition created by each contact situation.

The Portuguese Language Continuum in Africa and Brazil is the first publication in English to offer studies on a whole set of varieties of Portuguese in Africa as well as Brazilian Portuguese. Authored by specialists on varieties of Portuguese in Africa and Brazil, the eleven chapters and the epilogue promote a dialogue between researchers interested in their genesis, sociohistories and linguistic properties. Most chapters directly address the idea of a continuum of Portuguese derived from parallel sociohistorical and linguistic factors in Africa and Brazil, due to the colonial expansion of the language to new multilingual settings. The volume contributes to the understanding of structural properties that are often shared by several varieties in this continuum, and describes the various situations and domains of language use as well as sociocultural contexts where they have emerged and where they are being used.

A proposta deste Saberes gramaticais: Formas, normas e sentidos no espaço escolar é trazer à discussão um conjunto de noções, conceitos e procedimentos que possam auxiliar o professor na tomada de decisões sobre como instigar os alunos a explorar suas próprias intuições linguísticas no trabalho com a gramática. Isso não significa que os livros didáticos devam ser relegados a segundo plano para dar lugar a reflexões exclusivamente intuitivas, mas que a abordagem gramatical apoiada nesses materiais pode se tornar mais produtiva se os alunos forem orientados a refletir sobre o conhecimento linguístico que internalizaram naturalmente no processo de aquisição da sua língua.Se o professor tiver em mente que a construção de saberes gramaticais pode ser guiada por esse conhecimento internalizado, o espaço destinado às aulas de gramática pode ser transformado em um verdadeiro laboratório de experimentos sobre as propriedades da língua. Só a partir daí o ensino de preceitos da norma-padrão deve ser efetivado, com os alunos passando a ter uma consciência produtiva e autônoma tanto sobre a gramática da sua língua quanto sobre o lugar apropriado às diferentes normas no uso efetivo da linguagem.