Analytical Tools for a Historiography of Syntactic Models

Taxonomic Network and Glossary of Metaterms from ‘Grammatica da lingua Portugue∫a’ (1540) by João de Barros

Abstract

This article aims to present two analytical tools for the analysis of syntactic models in the history of Western grammaticography: the taxonomic network and its glossary of metaterms. These tools are employed in systematizing the syntactic model found in the ‘Grammatica da língua Portugue∫a’ (1540) by João de Barros. The research aligns with reflections on the historiography of grammaticography and terminography (Swiggers, 2020; Gómez Asencio; Gonçalves, 2015; among others) and adheres to certain principles and procedures, such as considering the content of metaterms within the ‘focal content’ and ‘contrastive content’ interface, and analyzing metaterms at different levels of reference, from the most ‘substantial’ to the most ‘relational’. The results demonstrate that the taxonomic network graphically records and exemplifies the formal and logical relationships between metaterms that structure a syntactic model, capturing its macroorganization and revealing terminographic details. The glossary of metaterms allows present-day readers to gain a deeper understanding of a past syntactic model, as well as to track transformations in relationships between terms and concepts. From the interpretation of Barros’s (1540) network and glossary, it is concluded, among other points, that the notion of ‘regimento’ asserts itself in the work not only due to the possibility of adherence to the Latin case system but also for its value to the metalinguistic description axis; the grammarian is sensitive to complex language constructions, although lacking technical apparatus and appropriate terminology to systematize these syntactic processes.