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In: Rudolf Muhr (ed.) (2012): Non-dominant Varieties of pluricentric Languages. Getting the Pic- ture. In memory of Michael Clyne. Wien et. al., Peter Lang Verlag. p. 327-348. Aline BAZENGA (Universidade da Madeira, Portugal) aline@uma.pt Variation in subject-verb agreement in an insular variety of European Portuguese Abstract This paper examines the subject-verb agreement variation in one of the varieties of European Portuguese, taking into account previous propos- als/accounts for other varieties of Portuguese, in order to gain a better understanding of the factors influencing grammatical patterns in varie- ties of Portuguese. The present study focuses on the verbal agreement in the third person plural (or 3PL), using data from a corpus of sociolin- guistics interviews recorded in 2010 with 21 residents of Funchal, the capital of Madeira Island, Portugal. These results provide more data for the discussions about the variable subject-verb agreement in the varie- ties of Portuguese (African, Brazilian and European Portuguese varieties) and contribute to sketch a continuum of such varieties in the Lusophone space. 1. Introduction This paper is structured as follows. First, a brief overview of the historical development of Portuguese in Madeira will be given, and the sociolinguistic con- ditions that led to the emergence of the insular dialect characterizing the pre- sent linguistic situation in Madeira will be presented. Then, a overview of previ- ous variationist researches on subject-verb agreement in 3PL in different varie- ties of Portuguese and the most frequent patterns of subject-verb agreement in EP will be given. After that, a...