Formas de tratamento no português europeu: algumas considerações sobre formas neutras e não neutras

Abstract

Forms of address in the Portuguese language are complex and seem to be a fairly rapidly changing area of the language. These forms, due to their gradation, complexity and subtlety, generate confusion and even conflict among speakers. In this short paper, guided in the beginning by Cintra (1972) and Allen (2019), to whom we later added other contributions, we explore the va- riety of forms in contemporary European Portuguese and, at the same time, try to understand the evolution of this multifaceted system since before the foundation of the Portuguese language. We focus in particular on a form of address that is problematic in some cases: "você", relating it to the alternative form of the 3rd person without an explicit subject. Finally, we carry out a small explora- tory study with data collection, which, although limited, allowed us to obtain some results regarding the potential of the 3rd person, without subject, and the way the pronoun "você" is used by certain social classes.