Through the hands of the Lords of Campo Seco: source for studying the history of penetration and propagation of the written language in the highlands of Bahia

Abstract

This article aims to present the linguistic study of a private manuscript, the Livro do Gado do Brejo do Campo Seco, written by a Lusitanian and his Brazilian descendants, in the Sertão da Bahia, between the ends of the colonial period in the middle of the times post-colonial. It is a relevant linguistic testimony for the studies of the social and linguistic reconstruction of Brazilian Portuguese, especially for the history of the penetration and diffusion of writing in the interior of Bahia. Thus, we sought to investigate the graphic aspects of the writers of this manuscript, investigating, from a qualitative perspective, the issue of disability / skill and the description of possible graph-phonetic indexes. For this study, Marquilhas (2000); Barbosa (1999, 2017). Regarding the results, it was found that the three authors of the Livro do Gado are not very skilled with written practice. In relation to the survey of graphical-phonetic indices, some occurrences, derived from the notes of Brazilians, appear to be aspects of lowering vowels; diphthong reduction; nasalization; vowel elevation. As for the graphic features, they identified aspects such as: graphics; latinization; grapheme replacement; grapheme elimination; inversion of grapheme order, spelling for nasal diphthong and vowel variation. This investigation collaborates with the third research agenda of PHPB, carrying out the linguistic study of the referred material, thus contributing with a significant corpus so that it is possible to reconstruct the past of Brazilian Portuguese (PB).