Study of augmentative and diminutive forms in archaic Portuguese

• Grant number: 09/12181-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: March 01, 2010
• End date: February 29, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Historical Linguistics
• Principal Investigator: Gladis Massini-Cagliari
• Grantee: Thais Holanda de Abreu-Zorzi
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Araraquara. Araraquara , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project aims to study augmentative and diminutive words in Archaic Portuguese (AP), through the observation of prosodic phenomena produced by morphophonological process of grade suffixes attachment: -inno and its variations for the diminutive, and -on(a), for the augmentative, in the Galician Portuguese, 13th century. Through this research we intend to discuss the question of prosodic status of augmentative and diminutive forms in AP as simple forms (one main lexical stress) or compounds (two lexical stresses). Thus the mapping and the analysis of prosodic phenomena in AP aim to contribute to a more general description of the phonological component of the language in that moment of the Portuguese origin. (AU)