GMHP Grupo de Morfologia Histórica do Português
versão em português Coordination: Prof. Dr. Mário Eduardo Viaro
Description
The GMHP - Grupo de Morfologia Histórica do Português (Group of Historical Morphology of the Portuguese Language) is an interdisciplinary group created in 2005 and it has been focusing on diachronic studies of flexion, derivation and composition of the Portuguese language. Besides being a project linked to the Diachronic and Synchronic Studies of Portuguese line of research of the Philology and Portuguese Language Area (Área de Filologia e Língua Portuguesa) of the Departamento de Letras Clássicas e Vernáculas (Department of Classical and Vernacular Languages) of the Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Human Sciences) of the Universidade de São Paulo (University of São Paulo) (USP), it is characterized as a Grupo de Pesquisa (Research Group) registered in the CNPq, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (National Council of Scientific and Technological Development), and several professionals from many different research institutes take part. Among some of its aims, some of which have already been fulfilled, are:
a) The cataloguing of words derived by suffixation of modern Portuguese (step fulfilled);
b) The establishment of semantic criteria of classification in order to define the meaning of suffixes, thus putting apart words of valid etyma from cases of homonymy and false etyma as well as to foresee convergence phenomena and etymological divergence;
c) The description of other mechanisms of word-formation (prefixation, composition, back-formation, among others), as well as of flexion in the Portuguese language from a diachronic point of view, associating productivity, diachrony and polisemy;
d) To gain an understanding of the differences in productivity in the spectrum of Brazilian Portuguese as well as of the variation of the Portuguese language in all Lusophone countries;
e) The analysis of the productivity of the Portuguese language compared to Romance languages, particularly in the Iberian Peninsula (analysis of vulgar, medieval and scientific Latin);
f) The investigation of loanwords (particularly from French and English), as well as the transmission of the etymon of the derived word or its components (especially affixes) to other languages, Romance or otherwise;
g) To provide a more precise dating of phenomena and word meanings based on its own corpora;
With an aim to visualize past synchronies, the establishment of a vast corpus was necessary, besides lists of derived words collected and typed by its own members. Some dates, older than the ones given by Juan Corominas, José Pedro Machado e Antônio Geraldo da Cunha were found and are being gathered in a systematic way. Issues of textual criticism are also occasionally observed in some specific cases: namely, when dates go back or when a behavioral idiosyncrasy is observed in past synchronies, the critical editions are then consulted with their corresponding critical apparatuses. The corpus is composed only of works of public domain. All the members collected and typed the entire Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional until 2007. It is worth mentioning that the Cantigas de Santa Maria - Afonso X (edition by Walter Mettmann) and the works by Gil Vicente in Portuguese were gathered by Mário Eduardo Viaro (who was also typing the Dicionário by Raphael Bluteau). The development and gathering of the corpus was also done by Mônica Yuriko Takahashi (Portuguese), Valéria Gil Condé (Galician), Vanderlei Gianastacio (Portuguese, Latin), Juliana Silva Lins (Latin) and Juliana Bianchi Leone (Portuguese). Graphics, analyses and programs that were of immense help to the interpretation of data are due to Zwinglio O. Guimarães-Filho. The project, the structuring and organization of this page are due to Nilsa Areán-García. This page was translated into English by Marco Syrayama de Pinto. Contributions are welcome (especially of typed texts of complete works that go back to a few centuries as well as information about dating that go further back than the ones present in Houaiss’ Dictionary, which was the first step towards an attempt at systematizing Antônio Geraldo Cunha’s work, kept at Casa Rui Barbosa/ Rio de Janeiro).
Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas
Grupo de Morfologia Histórica do Português