The origins of Portuguese grammar: a historiographical and critical approach

Abstract

This text is a critical reflection on the origins of Portuguese grammar, in particular on the belief that traditional grammar standardizes usage, using literary texts as a reference. As we will try to show here, it is a belief that, in general, does not correspond to reality, insofar as, in traditional grammatical works, data created by the author himself predominates (if not unique). There is, in none of them, a literary corpus from which to base their assertions and rules. When dealing critically with this issue, it is important to clarify that there are two distinct conceptions of grammar underlying it, coming from different aspects of language studies. On the one hand, there is grammar coming from the Greco-Latin tradition (and, therefore, qualified as traditional), which, in theory, bases its precepts on literary texts. On the other hand, there are the grammatical models developed by different theories within linguistics, whose empirical scope covers all manifestations of the language, whatever they may be. After a brief history of the constitution of traditional grammar, the origins of Portuguese grammar are specifically analyzed, showing that it was effectively created by the transposition of the doctrine consolidated in the Latin grammatical tradition and by the accommodation of the vernacular language within it. The source of normativity was not actually usage as such, but what was already said in Latin grammars.