Construction of active verbs: a historiographical interpretation of José de Anchieta’s linguistic thought (1595)

Abstract

This article aims to discuss Chapter VIII of Arte de gramática da língua mais usada na costa do Brasil (1990 [1595]), written by José de Anchieta (1534-1597), titled Da Conſtruição dos verbos actiuos (Anchieta, 1990 [1595], fol. 36r-37v). The specific theme of this chapter is the sentence construction with active verbs in the Tupinambá language, described according to the Latin humanistic grammar of its intellectual context. Thus, Anchieta’s grammar is linked to the extended Latin grammar standard described by Auroux (1992). To critically comment on the description of this linguistic fact by the 16th-century grammarian, we employ the theoretical and methodological foundation of Linguistic Historiography, following the Koernian methodology of analysis (Koerner, 2014; Swiggers, 2019). This approach aims to understand the process of the grammaticalization of the indigenous language according to the standard of extended Latin grammars, which shaped the text morphotype of the Renaissance, in which Anchieta’s grammatical work is contextualized, even though it was predominantly written in Portuguese.