By: Flávia Maria Augusta Martins
Portuguese is a national language of the CPLP countries. Timor-Leste has been a member of CPLP since his restauration in 2002. But before that, Timor-Leste was under the Portuguese colonization more than 450 years or more than four centuries. The first Timorese generation was educated by Portuguese Priests since the XVI century. On the middle of the XX century, the Portuguese education was banned by international invasion such as Australians, Dutch and Japanese interventions during their occupation more than five years. The teaching-learning was begun after that invasion. Timorese people who studied at elementary school, they lost opportunities to continue their study because of that invasion. On the end of XX century, Timor-Leste was invaded by Indonesian troops then Indonesian government for 24 years. For that time, Timorese people leant and spoke Indonesian language at schools, administrations and political management. And Portuguese was banished by Indonesian curriculum, so it was not taught at schools and was not implemented in society. Indonesian government built many schools from elementary schools until high schools. Also gave scholarship for Timorese students to study in Indonesia and many people were gradated in various courses. During the 24 years, some Timorese people had been members of regional government, troops, police, teachers, doctors, nurses and so on.
At Post-independence of Timor-Leste. In 2001, Portuguese was taught everywhere in Timor-Leste territory after Timorese people gained their Independence. Now Portuguese is known and spoken everywhere by Timorese people at colleges, schools, administration and political management. But because of the mixed languages in Timor-Leste, Timorese people use linguistic variations in Portuguese spoken. Those variations come from the languages spoken in Timor-Leste such as our national language Tetum, Indonesia, English and regional languages. The regional languages or mother tongue are 16 and also other language courses for applying jobs in abroad. Those languages add new variations in the Portuguese structure in noun phrases and verbal phrases. Exemples: PTL : Estudante comunicação social estudar conceito frase. PPE : Os estudantes de comunicação social estudam os conceitos da frase. Indonesian: Murid-murid belajar konsep kalimat. Inggris : The students study the concepts of phrase.
How to identify the contents of the PTL in the academic, political and public administration context in Timor-Leste?
The research carried out by the researcher through scientific references and in the natural environment in pedagogical meetings, noted the linguistic variations, that are, the deviations in nominal and regency concordance. Based on the scientific work of some international authors, one of them, the author Albuquerque (2012 and 2014) called the Portuguese spoken in East Timor as Portuguese of Timor-Leste (PTL). As a researcher, he was also a Portuguese language teacher who supported teaching Portuguese language classes in Timor-Leste during the transition period until the restoration of independence. In his pedagogical and scientific career, he detected linguistic variations in Portuguese regarding nominal and regency concordance in the writing and speaking of Timorese students. It was due to these two parts of the Portuguese language grammar variation that the researcher designated these variations as Portuguese of East Timor (PTL). This has been happening in the academic, political and public administration environment in Timor-Leste. But now Portuguese is known and spoken everywhere in East Timor because Portuguese is Timor-Leste’s official language. Although the using of Portuguese has variations in Timorese writing and speaking.
Nominal concordance refers to the number and gender of determiners, nouns and adjectives. While verbal concordance refers to number, person, tense and manner. In normative grammar, these terms are mandatory elements of the structure of a sentence or clause. Example: College’s students study elementary school subjects. PPE : Os estudantes do ensino superior estudam matérias do Ensino básico. In this example, we can see the nominal and verbal concordance following the rules of the European Portuguese standard.
In verbal concordance, there are variations in the concordance of verbs with nouns in number and person, mood and tense. Most speakers use the infinitive verb with the subject (noun) and some use only the third person singular verb with any subject, whether it is a plural or singular subject, all with the third person singular verb. And they do not conjugate the verb according to mood and tense, everything in the infinitive or, sometimes, in the present indicative in the third person singular. This is an influence from other languages such as Tetum and Indonesia, because these languages do not have verb conjugations, however, there are tense markers that determine the present, past and future tense in the indicative mood.
Nominal and verbal regency are terms in a sentence that indicate whether or not a verb or noun requires a preposition. In other words, nominal regency is about the relationship between nouns, adjectives or adverbs and their complements, and verbal regency is about the relationship between a verb and its complement. But these types are not parts of the Tetum and Indonesian grammar. In nominal regency, speakers ignore the use of complements. For example, “Estou perto da escola.” This relationship is established by a preposition, but speakers deviate from this relationship, they do not use the preposition. Example: *Estou perto a escola. The correct clause is : Estou perto da escola. Example 2:“I was satisfied with the result of the final exam.” “ Eu fiquei satisfeito com o resultado do exame final.” * eu fiquei satisfeito o resultado do exame final;Ele foi muito fiel aos seus princípios. * Ele foi muito fiel os seus princípios; In these examples of nominal regency described above, the difference between name + complement can be noted; adverb + complement; adjective + complement and noun + complement. The complement of a noun, adverb and adjective requires a preposition. Therefore, it is called nominal regency.
In verbal regency, speakers do not use the complement of verbs. Example : * Eles chegam o local indicado no mapa. The correct clause is: Eles chegam ao local indicado no mapa. English: They arrive at the indicated local in map. * Eles precisam ir mais cedo. The correct clause is: Eles precisam de ir mais cedo. English: They need to go early. In verbal regency, the complement of verb requires a preposition. Therefore, it is called verbal regency but speakers do not use the verb complement that requires a preposition, so that some international researchers named PTL.
Conclusion : The components of the deviations of Portuguese spoken in East Timor (PTL) were and are issues of nominal and regency concordance. However, these deviations are referred to variations of Portuguese spoken in East Timor by international researchers. Speakers create new linguistic variations, in this case, speakers deviate from the norms of use of these two parts: concordance and regency nominal and verbal in writing and speaking. Concordance studies the relationship between functional categories (articles, pronouns, numerals, etc.) and lexical categories (nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc.). While regency studies the relationship between nouns and verbs with prepositional complements. These variations will one day be recognized when they are necessary for the evolution of Portuguese linguistics. (*)
