Previous studies on the diachrony of wh-interrogation in Brazilian Portuguese have observed a replacement process of ex-situ-wh interrogatives by cleft-wh and in-situ-wh interrogatives in the twentieth century. The present study analyzes almost 19,000 wh-interrogatives from a corpus of theater plays dated between 1800 and 2016, demonstrating that not all of these frequency changes constitute actual change. The increase in the usage frequency of several types of wh-interrogatives is partially or entirely due to changes in the degree of orality of theater plays, or changes in word order. Moreover, only some of these changes can be characterized as changes from below, that is, changes in which high-orality texts are affected by the frequency increase first. This notion is also relevant for functional change in wh-interrogatives. Over time, the use of cleft-wh and in-situ-wh interrogatives spread from contexts in which the proposition is highly accessible to low-accessibility contexts. For cleft-wh, this change is moderated by orality, again indicating change from below.

中文翻译：

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巴西葡萄牙语 wh 疑问句的实际和明显变化

以往的历时研究什么-用巴西葡萄牙语审讯观察到了一个易地的替代过程-什么cleft 的疑问句什么和原位什么二十世纪的疑问句。本研究分析了近 19,000什么- 来自 1800 年至 2016 年间戏剧语料库的疑问句，表明并非所有这些频率变化都构成实际变化。几种类型的使用频率增加什么-疑问部分或全部是由于戏剧口述程度的变化，或词序的变化。而且，这些变化中只有一部分可以被描述为自下而上的变化，即高口语文本首先受频率增加影响的变化。这个概念也与功能变化有关什么- 疑问句。随着时间的推移，使用裂什么和原位什么疑问句从命题容易接近的语境传播到低易接近性的语境。对于裂——什么，这种变化是由口述缓和的，再次表明从下面发生的变化。