NEW THOUGHTS ON THE HISTORICAL CONSTITUTION OF BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE

Abstract

The present paper aims at revising the main ideas that have been propagated in the academic field concerning the process of constitution of Brazilian Portuguese, whose identity and distance in relation to European Portuguese has long been observed. Moreover, it revives the discussion on the real dimension and role of African languages in the formation process of this linguistic variety in Brazil. To understand linguistic change, this study has sought to rekindle the issue to look beyond the albeit indispensible socio-historical and demographic data. Although studies that adopt the perspective that BP is a creole have yielded good results in the understanding of linguistic origins in the New World, such studies may have overestimated the occurrence of creoles in the southern hemisphere to the point of considering pidgins and creoles the only explanations of any contact that expanding languages might have had. Further and more detailed comparative studies on Bantu and Portuguese are required, which may provide new directions for research in this field.