The expression of imperfective past in the work of Fernão Lopes: a diachronic analysis

Authors

  • A. M. Santos Núcleo de Letras, Grupo de Estudos em Linguagem, Interação e Sociedade, Universidade Federal de Sergipe
  • R. M. Ko. Freitag Núcleo de Letras, Grupo de Estudos em Linguagem, Interação e Sociedade, Universidade Federal de Sergipe

Keywords:

Imperfective past, variation, change, Fernão Lopes

Abstract

In the informal conversation, we turned to two verbal forms to indicate the semantic-discursive value of imperfective past:  pretérito imperfeito do indicativo (IMP), ‘cantava’; and periphrastic form (PPROG), ‘estava estudando’. This text, in historical linguistic field, purposes a historic and diachronic approach of the verbal forms that codify imperfective past in Old Portuguese. The “Chonica de El-Rei D. João I” (1644), by Fernão Lopes, a Portuguese chronist, is analized to show what modifies in semantic-discursive functions of imperfective past may be suffering in the time ago. With this study, we demonstrate that archaic texts – prior to the proposed standardization of the Portuguese language – serve as a corpus to verify the processes of variation and change in a particular language. 

How to Cite

Santos, A. M., & Freitag, R. M. K. (2011). The expression of imperfective past in the work of Fernão Lopes: a diachronic analysis. Scientia Plena, 5(11). Retrieved from https://scientiaplena.org.br/sp/article/view/757