---
title: "Can I guess where you are from? Modeling dialectal"
description: "The authors examine four second-person phenomena: the subject pronoun (você/cê/tu), the clitic (te/lhe), the possessive… 29 references."
authors: ["Manoel Siqueira", "Raquel Freitag"]
year: 2026
venue: "Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computational Processing of Portuguese (PROPOR 2026) - Vol. 1"
source: "https://aclanthology.org/2026.propor-1.59/"
licence: "CC BY 4.0 (ACL Anthology)"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/siqueira-2026-can-i-guess-where-you/"
---
[Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/siqueira-2026-can-i-guess-where-you/)

[home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2026](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2026/page/24/) / Can I guess where you are from? Modeling dialectal morphosyntactic similarities in Brazilian Portuguese

# Can I guess where you are from? Modeling dialectal morphosyntactic similarities in Brazilian Portuguese

**Authors:** Manoel Siqueira and Raquel Freitag · **Year:** 2026 · **Venue:** [Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computational Processing of Portuguese (PROPOR 2026) - Vol. 1](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/propor/) ([International Conference on Computational Processing of Portuguese 2026](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/propor/2026/)) · **Publisher:** [Association for Computational Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/association-for-computational-linguistics/) · **Licence:** [CC BY 4.0 (ACL Anthology)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/2026.propor-1.59/) · [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/2026.propor-1.59.pdf) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W7140164398)

**Citations:** 0 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14)

## Summary
The paper asks whether a Brazilian Portuguese speaker's regional origin can be inferred from how several grammatical variables behave together, rather than from any single feature. The authors examine four second-person phenomena: the subject pronoun (você/cê/tu), the clitic (te/lhe), the possessive (seu/teu and inflections), and whether an article precedes the possessive. The data come from three samples of the Falares Sergipanos dataset, which are semi-spontaneous sociolinguistic interviews with UFS university students. Speakers are grouped into four mobility ("displacement") profiles that serve as a proxy for dialectal origin. Occurrences were found with spaCy pattern rules and then validated by human annotators. Analyses in R compared pairwise correlation with clustering of speakers based on their morphosyntactic profiles. Correlation revealed only a few limited associations between variables. Clustering produced speaker groups that partly track regional patterns, although group homogeneity stayed below the authors' target. The work matters for building language technology that does not penalize dialectal speech. It also argues that ethically collected, human-transcribed corpora are needed instead of web-scraped or purely ASR-transcribed data.

## Key points
- Data: the Deslocamentos 2019, Deslocamentos 2020 and Linguagem Corporificada 2023 samples from Falares Sergipanos, covering 181 speakers aged 18–30 and 1,002,535 words, transcribed by humans in ELAN.
- The four variables (pro2P, clit2P, poss2P, det-poss) together yield 24 possible combinations. Extraction used spaCy Matcher-style rules over POS, lemma and morphological features (e.g., VerbForm=Fin, PronType=Prs).
- The displacement profiles cover four groups: Aracaju metropolitan natives, daily commuters from inland Sergipe, inland-born students living in Aracaju, and students from other states (mainly Bahia and Alagoas).
- The principal components explained 58.9% of variance. The clustering did not reach the expected ≥75% homogeneity within mobility groups, which the authors attribute partly to small sample size.
- Stated limitations include the focus on morphosyntax only and the restriction to young students. The authors propose the Plataforma da Diversidade Linguística Brasileira (LGPD-compliant, FAIR) as a future source of larger data for supervised, neural, transfer or few-shot approaches.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

## Institutions

Also on the byline: [Universidade Federal de Alagoas](https://ror.org/00dna7t83) · [Universidade Federal de Sergipe](https://ror.org/028ka0n85).

📚 Shelves (2): [🎭 Arts and Humanities](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/) · 16,039 works · [🗣️ Language and Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/language-and-linguistics/) · 15,891 works

## Cite

Cite as: Manoel Siqueira and Raquel Freitag. 2026. Can I guess where you are from? Modeling dialectal morphosyntactic similarities in Brazilian Portuguese. Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computational Processing of Portuguese (PROPOR 2026) - Vol. 1.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@inproceedings{siqueira2026can,
  title = {{Can I guess where you are from? Modeling dialectal morphosyntactic similarities in Brazilian Portuguese}},
  author = {Manoel Siqueira and Raquel Freitag},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computational Processing of Portuguese (PROPOR 2026) - Vol. 1},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://aclanthology.org/2026.propor-1.59/}
}
```

- [← previous Can Emotions Signal Gender? Investigating Implicit Cues in Human and LLM Translations of Amazon Reviews](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/manakhimova-2026-can-emotions-signal-gender-investigating/)
- [next → Can Large Language Models Facilitate Qualitative Political Narrative Analysis?](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/stephens-2026-can-large-language-models-facilitate/)
- [↑ back to papers of 2026](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2026/page/24/)

## References

29 references, 3 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

1. Khadige Abboud and Gokmen Oz. 2024. Towards equitable natural language understanding systems for dialectal cohorts: Debiasing training data. In Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024), pages 16487– 1649… [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Khadige+Abboud+and+Gokmen+Oz%2E+2024%2E+Towards+equitable+natural+language+understanding+systems+for+dialectal+cohorts%3A+Debiasing+training+data%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+2024+Joint+International+Conference+o)
2. Douglas Bates, Martin Mächler, Ben Bolker, and Steve Walker. 2015. [Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/bates-2015-fitting-linear-mixed-effects-models/). Journal of statistical software, 67:1–48.
3. Anup Bera and Aanchal Agarwal. 2024. Bias detection and mitigation framework for asr system. In International Conference on Signal Processing and Information Communications, pages 13–27. Springer. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Anup+Bera+and+Aanchal+Agarwal%2E+2024%2E+Bias+detection+and+mitigation+framework+for+asr+system%2E+In+International+Conference+on+Signal+Processing+and+Information+Communications%2C+pages+13%E2%80%9327%2E+Springer%2E)
4. Ana Julia Oliveira Borges, Tulio Sousa de Gois, and Paloma Batista Cardoso. 2026. Avaliação da aplicação de transcrição automática em entrevistas sociolinguísticas: um estudo exploratório no banco de dados falares sergipanos. Manuscript under review. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Ana+Julia+Oliveira+Borges%2C+Tulio+Sousa+de+Gois%2C+and+Paloma+Batista+Cardoso%2E+2026%2E+Avalia%C3%A7%C3%A3o+da+aplica%C3%A7%C3%A3o+de+transcri%C3%A7%C3%A3o+autom%C3%A1tica+em+entrevistas+sociolingu%C3%ADsticas%3A+um+estudo+explorat%C3%B3rio+no+banco+de+)
5. Isabelle Buchstaller and Ghada Khattab. 2013. Population samples. Research methods in linguistics, pages 74–95. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Isabelle+Buchstaller+and+Ghada+Khattab%2E+2013%2E+Population+samples%2E+Research+methods+in+linguistics%2C+pages+74%E2%80%9395%2E)
6. Minh Duc Bui, Carolin Holtermann, Valentin Hofmann, Anne Lauscher, and Katharina von der Wense. 2025. Large language models discriminate against speakers of german dialects. In Proceedings of the 2025 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, pages 8223–8251. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Minh+Duc+Bui%2C+Carolin+Holtermann%2C+Valentin+Hofmann%2C+Anne+Lauscher%2C+and+Katharina+von+der+Wense%2E+2025%2E+Large+language+models+discriminate+against+speakers+of+german+dialects%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+2025)
7. Jesse Dodge, Maarten Sap, Ana Marasović, William Agnew, Gabriel Ilharco, Dirk Groeneveld, Margaret Mitchell, and Matt Gardner. 2021. Documenting large webtext corpora: A case study on the colossal clean crawled corpus. In Proceedings of the 2021 conference on empirical methods in natural language p… [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Jesse+Dodge%2C+Maarten+Sap%2C+Ana+Marasovic%CC%81%2C+William+Agnew%2C+Gabriel+Ilharco%2C+Dirk+Groeneveld%2C+Margaret+Mitchell%2C+and+Matt+Gardner%2E+2021%2E+Documenting+large+webtext+corpora%3A+A+case+study+on+the+colossal+cl)
8. Eve Fleisig, Genevieve Smith, Madeline Bossi, Ishita Rustagi, Xavier Yin, and Dan Klein. 2024. [Linguistic bias in chatgpt: Language models reinforce dialect discrimination](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/fleisig-2024-linguistic-bias-chatgpt-language-models/). In Proceedings of the 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, pages 13541–13564.
9. Raquel Freitag, Marcia dos Santos Machado Vieira, Juliana Bertucci Barbosa, Miguel Oliveira Jr, Cleber Ataíde, Alana de Santana Correia, Amanda Post da Silveira, André Britto de Carvalho, Andréia Silva Araujo, Brayna Conceição dos Santos Cardoso, and 1 others. 2025. Plataforma da diversidade linguís… [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Raquel+Freitag%2C+Marcia+dos+Santos+Machado+Vieira%2C+Juliana+Bertucci+Barbosa%2C+Miguel+Oliveira+Jr%2C+Cleber+Ata%C3%ADde%2C+Alana+de+Santana+Correia%2C+Amanda+Post+da+Silveira%2C+Andr%C3%A9+Britto+de+Carvalho%2C+Andr%C3%A9ia+Silv)
10. M. Maechler, P. Rousseeuw, A. Struyf, M. Hubert, and K. Hornik. 2023. cluster: Cluster analysis basics and extensions. R package version 2.1.4. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=M%2E+Maechler%2C+P%2E+Rousseeuw%2C+A%2E+Struyf%2C+M%2E+Hubert%2C+and+K%2E+Hornik%2E+2023%2E+cluster%3A+Cluster+analysis+basics+and+extensions%2E+R+package+version+2%2E1%2E4%2E)
11. Livia Oushiro. 2016. Social and structural constraints in lectal cohesion. Lingua, 172:116–130. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Livia+Oushiro%2E+2016%2E+Social+and+structural+constraints+in+lectal+cohesion%2E+Lingua%2C+172%3A116%E2%80%93130%2E)
12. Alec Radford, Jong Wook Kim, Tao Xu, Greg Brockman, Christine McLeavey, and Ilya Sutskever. 2023. [Robust speech recognition via large-scale weak supervision](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/radford-2022-robust-speech-recognition-large-scale/). In International conference on machine learning, pages 28492–28518. PMLR.
13. Maria Marta Pereira Scherre, Carolina Queiroz Andrade, and Rafael de Castro Catão. 2021. Por onde transitam o tu e o você no nordeste? Revista de Letras, 40:164– 197. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Maria+Marta+Pereira+Scherre%2C+Carolina+Queiroz+Andrade%2C+and+Rafael+de+Castro+Cat%C3%A3o%2E+2021%2E+Por+onde+transitam+o+tu+e+o+voc%C3%AA+no+nordeste%3F+Revista+de+Letras%2C+40%3A164%E2%80%93+197%2E)
14. Maria Marta Pereira Scherre, Edilene Patrícia Dias, Carolina Queiroz Andrade, and Germano Ferreira Martins. 2015. Variação dos pronomes ’tu’ e ’você’. In Marco Antonio Martins and Jussara Abraçado, editors, Mapeamento sociolinguístico do português brasileiro, 1 edition, pages 133–172. Contexto, São… [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Maria+Marta+Pereira+Scherre%2C+Edilene+Patr%C3%ADcia+Dias%2C+Carolina+Queiroz+Andrade%2C+and+Germano+Ferreira+Martins%2E+2015%2E+Varia%C3%A7%C3%A3o+dos+pronomes+%E2%80%99tu%E2%80%99+e+%E2%80%99voc%C3%AA%E2%80%99%2E+In+Marco+Antonio+Martins+and+Jussara+Abra%C3%A7ado%2C+ed)
15. Raquel M. K. Freitag. 2013. Banco de dados falares sergipanos. Working Papers em Linguística, 14(1):156–164. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Raquel+M%2E+K%2E+Freitag%2E+2013%2E+Banco+de+dados+falares+sergipanos%2E+Working+Papers+em+Lingu%C3%ADstica%2C+14%281%29%3A156%E2%80%93164%2E)
16. Raquel M. K. Freitag. 2018. Amostras sociolinguísticas: probabilísticas ou por conveniência? Revista de estudos da linguagem, 26(2):667–686. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Raquel+M%2E+K%2E+Freitag%2E+2018%2E+Amostras+sociolingu%C3%ADsticas%3A+probabil%C3%ADsticas+ou+por+conveni%C3%AAncia%3F+Revista+de+estudos+da+linguagem%2C+26%282%29%3A667%E2%80%93686%2E)
17. Raquel M. K. Freitag. 2022a. Mobility and higher education in grammatical patterns of brazilian portuguese. In Rudolf Muhr, Eduardo Duarte, Cristina Rodrigues, and John Thomas, editors, Pluricentric Languages in the Americas, pages 201–218. PCL-PRESS, Graz/Berlin. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Raquel+M%2E+K%2E+Freitag%2E+2022a%2E+Mobility+and+higher+education+in+grammatical+patterns+of+brazilian+portuguese%2E+In+Rudolf+Muhr%2C+Eduardo+Duarte%2C+Cristina+Rodrigues%2C+and+John+Thomas%2C+editors%2C+Pluricentric+L)
18. Raquel M. K. Freitag. 2022b. Sociolinguistic repositories as asset: challenges and difficulties in brazil. The Electronic Library, 40(5):607–622. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Raquel+M%2E+K%2E+Freitag%2E+2022b%2E+Sociolinguistic+repositories+as+asset%3A+challenges+and+difficulties+in+brazil%2E+The+Electronic+Library%2C+40%285%29%3A607%E2%80%93622%2E)
19. Raquel M. K. Freitag and Túlio Sousa de Gois. 2024. Performance in a dialectal profiling task of llms for varieties of brazilian portuguese. In Simpósio Brasileiro de Tecnologia da Informação e da Linguagem Humana (STIL), pages 317–326. SBC. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Raquel+M%2E+K%2E+Freitag+and+T%C3%BAlio+Sousa+de+Gois%2E+2024%2E+Performance+in+a+dialectal+profiling+task+of+llms+for+varieties+of+brazilian+portuguese%2E+In+Simp%C3%B3sio+Brasileiro+de+Tecnologia+da+Informa%C3%A7%C3%A3o+e+da+Lin)
20. Gregory R Guy. 2013. The cognitive coherence of sociolects: How do speakers handle multiple sociolinguistic variables? Journal of pragmatics, 52:63–71. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Gregory+R+Guy%2E+2013%2E+The+cognitive+coherence+of+sociolects%3A+How+do+speakers+handle+multiple+sociolinguistic+variables%3F+Journal+of+pragmatics%2C+52%3A63%E2%80%9371%2E)
21. Manoel Siqueira. 2025. Covariação morfossintática no português brasileiro: identificação dialetal de estudantes da Universidade Federal de Sergipe. Tese (doutorado em letras), Universidade Federal de Sergipe, São Cristóvão. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Manoel+Siqueira%2E+2025%2E+Covaria%C3%A7%C3%A3o+morfossint%C3%A1tica+no+portugu%C3%AAs+brasileiro%3A+identifica%C3%A7%C3%A3o+dialetal+de+estudantes+da+Universidade+Federal+de+Sergipe%2E+Tese+%28doutorado+em+letras%29%2C+Universidade+Federal+de+)
22. Manoel Siqueira and Raquel M. K. Freitag. 2025. O controle da mobilidade na constituição de amostras sociolinguísticas. In Mônica Maria Guimarães Savedra, Telma Pereira, and Anderson Lucas Macedo, editors, ABPEC-UFF: Contato, Glotopolítica e Etni-cidade em movimento, 1 edition, pages 43–71. Pedro &… [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Manoel+Siqueira+and+Raquel+M%2E+K%2E+Freitag%2E+2025%2E+O+controle+da+mobilidade+na+constitui%C3%A7%C3%A3o+de+amostras+sociolingu%C3%ADsticas%2E+In+M%C3%B4nica+Maria+Guimar%C3%A3es+Savedra%2C+Telma+Pereira%2C+and+Anderson+Lucas+Macedo%2C+edi)
23. Manoel Siqueira, Marta D. A. F. Sousa, and F. G. C. Rodrigues. 2023. Sistematizando padrões dialetais morfossintáticos: mobilidade e contato. In Raquel M. K. Freitag and Mônica Maria Guimarães Savedra, editors, Mobilidades e contatos linguísticos no Brasil, 1 edition, pages 165–188. Blucher, São Pau… [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Manoel+Siqueira%2C+Marta+D%2E+A%2E+F%2E+Sousa%2C+and+F%2E+G%2E+C%2E+Rodrigues%2E+2023%2E+Sistematizando+padr%C3%B5es+dialetais+morfossint%C3%A1ticos%3A+mobilidade+e+contato%2E+In+Raquel+M%2E+K%2E+Freitag+and+M%C3%B4nica+Maria+Guimar%C3%A3es+Savedra)
24. Marta D. A. F. Sousa and Raquel M. K. Freitag. 2024. Bancos de dados sociolinguísticos e a ciência aberta: compartilhamento de dados e conhecimentos. Revista Diálogos, 12:165–187. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Marta+D%2E+A%2E+F%2E+Sousa+and+Raquel+M%2E+K%2E+Freitag%2E+2024%2E+Bancos+de+dados+sociolingu%C3%ADsticos+e+a+ci%C3%AAncia+aberta%3A+compartilhamento+de+dados+e+conhecimentos%2E+Revista+Di%C3%A1logos%2C+12%3A165%E2%80%93187%2E)
25. Birgit Hellwig and Dieter Van Uytvanck. 2003. Eudico linguistic annotator (elan) version 1.4-manual. Last updated. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Birgit+Hellwig+and+Dieter+Van+Uytvanck%2E+2003%2E+Eudico+linguistic+annotator+%28elan%29+version+1%2E4%2Dmanual%2E+Last+updated%2E)
26. William Labov. 1972. Sociolinguistic patterns. University of Pennsylvania press. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=William+Labov%2E+1972%2E+Sociolinguistic+patterns%2E+University+of+Pennsylvania+press%2E)
27. William Labov. 2006. The social stratification of English in New York city. Cambridge University Press. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=William+Labov%2E+2006%2E+The+social+stratification+of+English+in+New+York+city%2E+Cambridge+University+Press%2E)
28. Fangru Lin, Shaoguang Mao, Emanuele La Malfa, Valentin Hofmann, Adrian de Wynter, Xun Wang, Si-Qing Chen, Michael J Wooldridge, Janet Pierrehumbert, and Furu Wei. 2025. Assessing dialect fairness and robustness of large language models in Irshad Ahmad Thukroo, Rumaan Bashir, and Kaiser J Giri. 2022.… [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Fangru+Lin%2C+Shaoguang+Mao%2C+Emanuele+La+Malfa%2C+Valentin+Hofmann%2C+Adrian+de+Wynter%2C+Xun+Wang%2C+Si%2DQing+Chen%2C+Michael+J+Wooldridge%2C+Janet+Pierrehumbert%2C+and+Furu+Wei%2E+2025%2E+Assessing+dialect+fairness+and+)
29. Charlotte Vaughn and Tyler Kendall. 2019. Stylistically coherent variants: Cognitive representation of social meaning/variantes estilisticamente coerentes: Representação cognitiva de significados sociais. Revista de estudos da linguagem, 27(4):1787–1830. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Charlotte+Vaughn+and+Tyler+Kendall%2E+2019%2E+Stylistically+coherent+variants%3A+Cognitive+representation+of+social+meaning%2Fvariantes+estilisticamente+coerentes%3A+Representa%C3%A7%C3%A3o+cognitiva+de+significados+soci)

*Updated 1 November 2026*