As inherently social beings, we humans deeply value our connections to others, forming identities anchored in these relationships. This fundamental aspect of our nature is reflected in human languages, which have evolved various tools to express our collective experiences. Among these tools are person markers for the first person plural (1PL), which not only designate a specific group but also, intriguingly, can refer to unspecific groups and even to human beings in general, as so-called impersonalising strategies.
In my PhD thesis, I explore this fascinating intersection of impersonalising and referential functions of 1PL subject-verb agreement in Romance languages. Prime examples of elements that have emerged from this intersection are the French pronoun “on” (derived from Latin HOMO, meaning 'man' or 'person'), and the Portuguese “a gente” (literally, 'the people'), both of which serve as 1PL markers in various contexts.
Focusing on rural varieties of Madeiran Portuguese, my research examines the unique usage of the impersonal marker “se”, commonly found in passive and impersonal constructions across different Romance languages. For instance, the phrase “Em Portugal come-se bem” translates to “One eats well in Portugal,” where “se” marks impersonality. However, in Madeiran Portuguese, this “se” exhibits new functions which overlap with other 1PL markers like the subject pronouns “nós” and “a gente”, and the 1PL suffix “-mos”, presenting a compelling case of grammatical change.
The core data for my study stems from semi-structured interviews with native speakers from rural Madeira, collected during extensive fieldwork. By adopting a sociolinguistic framework, I analyse how these 1PL markers vary across different linguistic and extralinguistic factors, such as verb semantics (especially ‘agentivity’), tense, aspect, mood, the age of the speaker, and their level of education.

Profile: Beyond the academic, my journey into linguistics was inspired by my multilingual upbringing in Venezuela and Switzerland, countries to which my Portuguese parents migrated. This rich linguistic environment sparked my passion for languages early on, leading me to pursue a PhD in Linguistics, here at the University of Zurich. My academic path includes a Master’s degree in Ibero-Romance Linguistics and Literature and French Linguistics, and my collaboration in the project “Beyond Structuralism“ under Professor Johannes Kabatek, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Additionally, I am a member of the editorial team for the academic journal Energeia, and my research interests span morphosyntactic variation in Ibero-Romance, the history of linguistics, demolinguistics, and migration linguistics.