Dicionários e História da Língua: ‘vozes antiquadas’ na Produção Lexicográfica e Paralexicográfica do séc. XVIII Português

Abstract

As Verdelho and Silvestre (2007: 5-6) point out, the Portuguese lexicographic heritage up to the 18th century is modest, in comparison with other European languages in the same period. Nevertheless, it can be said that, since the Dictionarium ex Lusitano in Latinum Sermonem – Portuguese-Latin dictionary by Jerónimo Cardoso which, in the 16th century, inaugurates the lexicographic production in Portuguese – this production has registered a progressive development that culminates in the 18th century, characterized, generally, by an effervescence of metalinguistic production, and, particularly, by a large amount of lexicographic production. In the present text – assuming that the lexicographic works “reflect the life of the language more than any other text of the written heritage and, for this reason, they offer us today a privileged itinerary for linguistic Portuguese diachrony and are also a source and an instrument of access for literary memory and, generally, for cultural memory” (Verdelho & Silvestre 2007: 6) – we aim to highlight the potential of the lexicographic texts as sources for the study of the history of language, taking as example the case of the “vozes antiquadas” (“Reflexão 2ª, Sobre o uso de algumas vozes antiquadas”, from the firs volume of Reflexões sobre a língua portugueza (1842), by Francisco José Freire) in a comparative perspective with some of the most relevant works of the Portuguese monolingual lexicography of the 18th century.