Variação e mudança lexical em Libras: exame a partir de sinalários dos séculos XIX, XX E XXI

Abstract

The development of research that focuses on linguistic history is crucial, especially for minoritized and relatively recent languages such as Libras. In this study, we investigated part of the linguistic history of Libras, considering the linguistic phenomena of lexical change and linguistic variation. In this process, we sought to answer the following research questions: i) Is it possible to recover the linguistic history of Libras by analyzing lexical change in real time of short duration between the 19th and 21st centuries? ii) What patterns are there in the variation and change of signs recorded in four lexicographic works from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries? Based on these questions, our general objective was to investigate the changes and variations in the lexicon of Libras in diachronic terms, based on the Labovian proposal of real-time analysis (Labov, 2008 [1972]) and also comparative analysis (Faraco, 2005) based on four dictionaries from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. For this analysis, we selected four dictionaries published during these periods as our data source: Iconographia dos signaes dos Surdos-mudos (Gama, 1875), Linguagem das mãos (Oates, 1983), Comunicando em Libras - Módulo 1 (Jesus et al., 2006) and Dicionário Enciclopédico Ilustrado Trilíngue da Língua de Sinais Brasileira - Vol. 1 e Vol. 2 (Capovilla; Raphael; Mauricio, 2013). After setting up the research corpus, made up of 35 signs identified in the dictionaries, we studied lexical variation in the four lexicographical works mentioned; we described and classified the processes of change in the signs studied over this period; we mapped the patterns of lexical variation and change in the history of Libras considering the corpus analyzed. Finally, we described and tried to interpret the changes in terms of lexical change and linguistic variation. As a main result, we found that the corpus analyzed had a greater number of signs of lexical change - 22 signs - compared to linguistic variation - 10 signs, in addition to 03 signs that remained unchanged throughout the period analyzed. We found that, quantitatively, most of the sign changes that resulted in one lexicon being replaced by another took place from the 19th to the 20th century, when there were 1 sign changes. In cases of linguistic variation, we found signs that showed phonological variation in an isolated linguistic parameter and others in two or three associated parameters.