O percurso histórico da acentuação em português através da análise do ritmo das cantigas de amigo

Abstract

This work aims to outline the historical route of Portuguese stress, through the analysis of three cmcial points in the language temporal continuum: LATIN, ARCHAIC PORTUGUESE, anel BRAzmAN PORTUGUESE. TIle emphasis is given to the description of the Archaic Portuguese stress attribution process, anel the corpus is constituteel by aU the "cantigas ele amigo· of the Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, composeel between the enel of the XIIth century anel the beginning of the XIVth century. The theoretical framework adopteel here comes from the conceptions of parametric change - following Lightfoat (1991) - anel af nanlinear phonology - specially Hayes' (1991) metrical theory anel Mohanan's (1986) lexical theory. The analysis shows that aU these three perioels of the language adopt the sarne rhythmic basic foot (the moraic trochee) - anel the sarne choice referring to the setting of aU other rhythmic parameters vaue. The only exception is the value of the extrametrical constituent parameter. We concluele that there is no change in the. stress mie from Latin to Brazilian Portuguese. The changes verified in the extrametrical constituent parameter value setting are, in fact, consequence of a major linguistic change, not in the formulation of the stress rule itself, but in the moelule of its application (from postlexical to lexical component), in the Grammar, and in its elomain of application.