Simbolismo sonoro do PB: o estudo dos ideofones

Abstract

[Introduction] The studies about ideophones in Brazilian Portuguese (PB) reveal that in the Portuguese system the ideophones are typically formed by bilabial sounds (CRUZ, 2000a). [aim] The main aim of this study is to verify if this is a typical feature of the PB or a resource of the sound symbolic expressivity. [methodology] In this study we observed the ideophones phenomenon in three kinds of varieties of Portuguese: (i) Afro-brazilian – ABP (CRUZ, 2000a), Brazilian dialect spoken in Amazonian by the maroon community; (ii) Amazonie Portuguese – AM (TRINDADE, 1992; CRUZ, 2000a; CASSIQUE, 1995) and (iii) standard Brazilian Portuguese – PB (OLIVEIRA, 2000; BORGES, 1991). We considered other data too: a) data collected through direct observation of different conversational situations and b) the data selected from cartoons. Particularly, we will analyse two aspects: the phonetic feature of the sounds found in the ideophones and the association of the meanings established. [results] The study of the Brazilian Portuguese ideophones show us: a) a tendency to bilabiail sounds, b) a tendency to expression links to emition of the sound and c) ideophones are not dialectal features of ABP. [conclusion] The results indicate a necessity to study more the PB.