O uso do clítico impessoal se como área de variação no português contemporâneo

This paper discusses three constructions with the impersonal clitic se , which raise questions regarding their acceptability in standard contemporary Portuguese, and/or where competition with other closely related constructions occurs. The following constructions are discussed: anomalous constructions with impersonal se combined with pronominal verbs (e.g. * em Portugal, queixa-se muito dos políticos ‘in Portugal, people complain a lot about politicians’); constructions with impersonal se combined with infinitive verb forms, in competition with the equivalent structures without the clitic (e.g. é difícil ser(-se) imparcial ‘it is hard to be impartial’); constructions with impersonal se combined with direct transitive verbs, in competition with the equivalent structures with passive se (e.g. vende-se / vendem-se casas ‘houses for sale’). Taking into account data mainly from newspaper text, but also from literary text and translated fiction, the current acceptance of these three constructions in Standard contemporary (mainly European but also, subsidiarially, Brazilian) Portuguese will be assessed. As will be shown, the first construction continues to be perceived as rather unnatural, while the remaining two illustrate a situation of genuine free variation, though subject to (stronger or weaker) stylistic constraints.