Estudo geossociolinguístico do léxico do Português falado pelos Baré, Tukano e Baniwa em São Gabriel da Cachoeira(AM): Tomo I

Abstract

The awareness of the differences or similarities existing in a community’s language is a response to the extralinguistic factors inherent to the speakers. Searching beyond the geographical aspect, we attest this assertion corresponds to a current conception within the scope of Pluridimensional and Relational Dialectology. This doctoral thesis, in line with this perspective, has as its general objective, to investigate the lexical variation of the Portuguese language spoken by the Baré, Tukano and Baniwa indigenous groups, in São Gabriel da Cachoeira (SGC) municipality, located in the state of Amazonas (AM), registering its features by means of linguistic maps with emphasis upon the diatopic, diagerational, diasexual and diastratic dimensions. The main theoretical and methodological contributions to this investigation rely on the studies of Thun (1998, 2000); Razky (1996, 2013) and Cardoso (1999), concerning the fields of dialectology and geosociolinguistics; Rodrigues (1963, 1985, 1986); Rodrigues and Cabral (2002); and Felix (2002), in respect of indigenous languages. The geolinguistic method accounts for the definition of the research locus and for the data collection procedures, mainly through questionnaires. The first one was the Sociolinguistic Questionnaire (SQ) from the project Atlas Sonoro das Línguas Indígenas do Brasil (ASLIB); the second, was the Metalinguistic/Epilinguistic Questionnaire; and the third one was the Lexical-Semantic Questionnaire from the project Atlas Linguístico do Brasil (QSL-ALiB-2001). Three enquiry points have been set, and eight speakers from each language, either sex, distinct educational levels and two different age ranges were interviewed, totaling 24 consultants. Forty lexical items referring to thirteen semantic fields were picked out of the collected and treated data. Results stemming from the analysis of the four dimensions, demonstrated that in this geographical area there is a significant lexical plurality to designate one same lexical item; however, there is no geographical delimitation restricted to the realization of the lexical variants found among the enquiry points. Considering the data from the Linguistic Atlas of Amazon (ALAM), Linguistic Atlas of Southern Amazon State (ALSAM) and Linguistic Atlas of Brazil (ALiB), the majority of the compared data provide evidences that there is more accentuated proximity of the variants registered in the ALSAM atlas. The Portuguese currently spoken in SGC, despite the socio historical factors, does not point to specific lexical items of a micro area, and presents slight distinction from the Portuguese spoken in other areas of the Amazon region and from the standard Portuguese language. This research will provide contributions to the fields of Geosociolinguistics and Pluridimensional Dialectology, having Razky and Thun as lead researchers respectively, as well as to the studies developed in the state of Amazon and to the ASLIB and GeoLinTerm projects to which this investigation is linked.