Phonetic Characteristics of «Remarques du Traducteur» do Maitre Portugais (Lisboa, 1799)

Abstract

This paper presents the graphophonetic content of the grammar entitled Maitre portugais ou Nouvelle grammaire portugaise et françoise, composée d’après les meilleurs grammaires et, particulierement, sur la portugaise et angloise d’Antoine Vieyra Transtagano (1799), published by an anonymous author. As this author seems to have benefited from the structure and content of the Anglo-Portuguese grammar A new portuguese grammar in four parts (1768) by António Vieira Transtagano (1712-1797), we will try to establish whether the French grammar is a mere translation of the English version or whether its translator made his own linguistic observations that let him be integrated within the Portuguese linguistic historiography as a contemporary foreign language. Bearing in mind the “climate of opinion” (Koerner, 2014) in which the work was published, we used the method of contrastive analysis of the two grammars (Auroux, 2006), which certified that although the author translated contents from the English grammar, he also added some subchapters with titles such as “Remarques du Traducteur”. In these texts, as well as in other similar annotations, the author added very pertinent and innovative points of view regarding the linguistic systematisation of Portuguese, particularly in terms of its phonetic characteristics, as a foreign language, which indorsed him to be highlighted among contemporary linguists such as Paul Teyssier. For these reasons, the translator of Maitre portugais is a work of reference within the Portuguese and Franco-Portuguese linguistics