VARIABLE RULES IN VERBAL AGREEMENT IN ADMISSION EXAMS TO THE UNIVERSITY: RESTRICTIONS AND EVALUATIONS

Abstract

This article presents results from a sociolinguistic investigation about the presence or absence of 3rd person morphological marks of verbs used by students in their admission exams to the University, which is a highly monitored linguistic situation. Taking into consideration the Theory of variation and change (WEINREICH, LABOV, HERZOG, 1968; LABOV, 1972, 1994, 2003), the investigation aims at (i) describing the variable rule, according to linguistic factors (restrictions problem), and (ii) characterizing social values of verbal forms in the context of formal evaluation (evaluation problem). The corpus consists of 400 compositions written to the admission exam at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Texts have been divided into four concepts, depending on the grade obtained to the domain of cult patterns of writing. Through correlation between the grades compositions have receivedand the use of (non)-verbal agreement, it will be possible to analyze the subjective appreciation of the alternative forms in the context of school evaluation.