Sinais de morte ou de vitalidade? Mudanças estruturais na Língua Tembé: contribuição ao estudo dos efeitos de contato lingüístico na Amazônia oriental

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to present an analysis of linguistic data from the Tembé language (Tupí-Guaraní family), in order to establish a preliminary discussion of the present state of the language’s vitality. The analysis takes, as its base, theoretical and methodological orientations from studies on obsolescent languages by DORIAN (1973, 1977, 1980) and CAMPBELL & MUNTZEL (1989), the theoretical model of language death proposed by SASSE (1992), and also more general principles of language contact theory and theoretical and methodological approaches proposed by THOMASON (2001) (for issues more closely related to linguistic changes in endangered languages). The results of the study, at hand, reveal that the various changes which have already taken place in Tembé, and those which are currently in progress, have transformed it into a more analytical language with simpler syntactic patterns than the most conservative languages in the Tupí-Guaraní family. However, this study also clearly shows that, despite these changes, Tembé continues to display signs of great vitality, and now depends on adequate policies stimulating native language use.