Vocabulário dialetal maranhense: a contribuição do Maranhão para o Dicionário Dialetal Brasileiro

Abstract

It is a well-known fact that many lexical units are not sufficiently represented in the general dictionaries of languages. In what concerns to Brazilian Portuguese, there is a one only systematic record of lexical unities that presumably does not represent the reality of the Brazilian lexicon. Having these considerations in mind, our study - linked to a broader research, Dicionário Dialetal Brasileiro (DDB), whose main objective is the making of a dictionary that encompasses the linguistic diversity of Brazil - has as main objective to present the Vocabulário Dialetal Maranhense (VDM), the proposal of a description of the linguistic reality of Maranhao, in what concerns to its lexical structure. Therefore, this research is anchored in the theoretical and methodological assumptions of Dialectology, Geolinguistics, Lexicography and Corpus Linguistics. There were catalogued 641 lexical unities used by speakers from Maranhão, obtained through the application of the Questionário Semântico-Lexical do Projeto Atlas Linguístico do Brasil - ALiB. The collected data evidenciates the usage of lexical units such as poxó, caxingó e cocholó, used for reference to the lexical unit manco. These data were analysed in a quantitative and qualitative perspective, according to the DDB’s methodological frame considering some peculiarities regarding to data and the elaboration of VDM. This research is presented as a way to increase the knowledge of Brazilian portuguese spoken in Maranhão and to offer subsidies for the construction of the DDB, fact that will contribute to a broader knowledge of the lexicon of Brazilian portuguese and specifically the variety spoken in Maranhão.