DIALECTAL SYNTAX: POST-VERBAL NEGATION IN MATO GROSSO DO SUL

We analyze sentential negation in data from dialectological interviews carried out by the Linguistic Atlas of Brazil Project (ALiB). Our goal is to describe the spatial and linguistic distribution of post-verbal negative structures (namely, [neg VP neg] and [VP neg]) in the dialects of the state of Mato Grosso do Sul (Midwest region of Brazil), in comparison with the results of other studies with ALiB data from other parts of the country: the states of Paraná (South region) and Bahia (Northeast region) (ARAÚJO, 2004; ARAÚJO, 2020; LOPES, 2021). We aim to identify in which dialects these negatives (specially [SV neg]) are present and absent; and in which sentence types (i.e. imperative, interrogative, embedded) these structures appear. We assume the hypothesis that such negatives become less frequent and less productive as one moves towards Brazil’s southern border, moving away from the Northeast region, where these negatives may have came from. The results showed that regarding the use of such negatives the Mato Grosso do Sul’s dialects are in an intermediate situation between Bahia and Paraná’s dialects: post-verbal negatives occur in more areas and in more informants than in Paraná’s dialects, suggesting that these negatives are more widespread in the Midwest than in the South of the country. From a syntactic point of view, however, the dialects from the three states behave similarly, with the exception of the absence of [VP neg] data in polar question and imperatives in Mato Grosso do Sul and Paraná.