Semi-diplomatic edition and study of the 17th century manuscript: a contribution to the Paulista Portuguese corpus

• Grant number: 15/26486-2
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Effective date (Start): July 01, 2016
• Effective date (End): April 30, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Historical Linguistics
• Cooperation agreement: Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)
• Principal researcher: Verena Kewitz
• Grantee: Kathlin Carla de Morais
• Home Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 11/51787-5 - Project for the History of Paulista Brazilian Portuguese, AP.TEM

Abstract

Historical Linguists has long faced what Labov (1972, 1994) defines as "the art of making best use of bad data", for it is fragmentary and accidental. Although such statement might still be valid nowadays, new trends on Text Linguistics have shown that dealing with old texts also means making the best use of good data if we take into account that some texts provide the emergence of specific structures, words and expressions, while others do not. Based on this assumption, this project aims at transcribing and analysing a colonial manuscript produced in Jundiaí in 1657, which is one of the oldest villages in São Paulo. The manuscript Cartas de Datas de Jundiaí is a collection of land grant letters patent written by the village officials in order to grant a tract of land to local people requiring it. The transcription of Cartas de Datas de Jundiaí will be based on the semi-diplomatic edition conventions (cf. Mattos e Silva 2001 Ed.), established for diachronic studies of Brazilian Portuguese, which stipulates that all original features of the manuscripts must be reproduced, including spelling and punctuation, abbreviations, deletions, insertions, and other alterations. The linguistic study of Cartas de Datas de Jundiaí will focus on the conventions, protocols and formulae present in the text in order to describe the processes of the document creation and transmission, as well as its emergence motivations. Other linguistic elements will be identified such as the communicative conditions and strategies based on Koch & Oesterreicher´s Discourse Traditions model (1990). Furthermore, this project aims at contributing to the development of Paulista Portuguese Corpus, which is part of a broader collective project called The History of Paulista Portuguese (FAPESP, Process Nr. 11/51787-5). (AU)