Interpretable everywhere

The goal of this paper is to account for the variable agreement properties of the 1PL pronoun a gente in Brazilian Portuguese. We argue that previous approaches make wrong predictions about how different types of agreement with a gente work in different environments (Costa & Pereira 2013; Taylor 2009, i.a.). As an alternative, we argue for a dual-feature approach that incorporates the distinction between ϕ-features that are semantically interpretable (INDEX features) and those that determine phonological exponents (CONCORD features) (Smith 2021; Wechsler & Zlati´c 2003). We propose that a gente has 1PL value for the former and a 3SG value for the latter and that both types of features can be targeted in non-anaphoric agreement (e.g. subject–verb agreement). The distinct usage preferences for different types of features in different environments follows from register considerations: structures where a gente is associated with overt 1PL exponents convey opposing social meanings. In order to capture this effect, we formulate a theory of social meaning composition based on formal models of honorification and conventional implicatures (cf. Machicao y Priemer et al. 2025; McCready 2019; Potts 2007; Varaschin et al. 2024).