Digitalization of the corpus for the project "Phonological identity in Portuguese: a comparative study: 13th-14th and 20th-21st centuries"

• Grant number: 10/06386-0
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: March 01, 2011
• End date: February 28, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Historical Linguistics
• Principal Investigator: Gladis Massini-Cagliari
• Grantee: Gladis Massini-Cagliari
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Araraquara. Araraquara , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Juliana Simões Fonte ; Natália Cristine Prado

Abstract

This project aims to build and digitalize a supporting corpus to a research project which intends to bring contribution to the determination of the relations between language change and phonological identity, investigating the limits of what is and what is not (or what was and what was not) considered "Portuguese" by its own native speakers, from the point of view of sound, in two different stages of the temporal continuum of the language. From the phonological point of view, the main objective is the comparative study of phonological aspects in Archaic (AP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP), in both dimensions, segmental and prosodic. Among the issues to be investigated are: 1. loans adaptation (comparing the behavior of common and proper nouns), in order to verify the power of the phonological system of the arrival language when incorporating words which are "strange" to this system, in both temporal stages, and its role in defining the "identity" of the borrowing language; and 2. linguistic rhythmic basic alternation, in both levels, primary and secondary, comparing both historical periods. The main activity is the digitalization of microfilms and manuscripts facsimile editions of medieval Galician Portuguese cancioneiros, through a scanning process, in order to make them accessible to the members of the Research Group "Portuguese Phonology: Archaic & Brazilian Portuguese". Texts of medieval Galician Portuguese poems will be also digitalized, from ancient editions which are not available on the Internet. (AU)