The Crase and Some Rules for Its Use

Abstract

In some languages, certain prepositions can contract with determiners and pronouns. In Portuguese, this is the case with the prepositions a, de, por, and em; when followed, for example, by the feminine definite article a, they take the forms à, da, pela, and na, respectively. In this paper, we address the contractions of the preposition *a* with the feminine definite articles *a* and *as*, which deserve special attention, as difficulties in their use within syntactic contexts are a reality. These contractions give rise to the crasis *à* in the feminine singular and *às* in the feminine plural. The use of the crasis is subject to the principles governing the syntax and semantics of the Portuguese language. Violation of these principles results, on the one hand, in the production of unacceptable utterances. We will address the following question: what underlies the violation of the rules governing the use of the crase? After reviewing some written texts, we hypothesize that certain groups in our society are unaware of the rules governing the use of the crase in written communication. Thus, the methodology for data collection and analysis is based on the observation of written messages by individuals who are part of the academic population in order to analyze the different characteristics of the crase. A survey was administered to a sample of 96 individuals from this same population—representing citizens from Angola’s 18 provinces—to investigate aspects related to the crase based on the characteristics of the results obtained from their responses.