The aim of this paper is to provide a functional interpretation for sentence word order of spoken Brazilian Portuguese (BP). According to the methodology adopted, generalisations of syntactic nature result necessarily from generalisations of semantic and pragmatic nature. The data constitute a representative sentence sampling of spoken Portuguese, drawn from interviews recorded by NURC Project. Since the functional approach considers the co-existence of different word order patterns, used in different conditions and for different purposes, this paper postulates that BP is endowed with two patterns, both equally relevant and pragmatically motivated: SVO and VSO order. It is also argued that such pragmatic motivations relate both patterns diachronically to a possible change in progress in BP typological classification that follows from a primitive VSO type to the actually prevailing SVO type.
Word order; Typological Classification; SVO order; VSO order; Predication