What is a short river about two meters wide in São Paulo state’s inland cities called?

Abstract

As a part out of Figueiredo Jr.’s (2019) dissertation, this paper presents the lexical variation emerged by the question “What is a short river about two meters wide called?” posed to 80 speakers living in ten São Paulo State’s inland cities—Santana de Parnaíba, Pirapora do Bom Jesus, Araçariguama, São Roque, Sorocaba, Itu, Porto Feliz, Tietê, Capivari, and Piracicaba—that are part of the Médio Tietê region, the cradle of the “Caipira” culture (GARCIA, 2011; PAZETTI, 2014). In total, 13 lexical covariants have been elicited, from which the most frequent and relevant ones constitute linguistic maps and are also quantitatively approached in perspective with diatopic, diastratic, diagenerational, and diagender-specific variables. A set of conclusions are drawn. Among them, it is revealed that Santana de Parnaíba is the most conservative city in the network, and that Tietê is the most innovative one. The former alternately uses the covariant group <córrego>/<corgo> and the covariant <riacho>, while the latter simultaneously utilizes the covariant group <córrego>/<corgo>, the covariant <riacho>, and the covariant <ribeirão> too. This study follows the theoretical and methodological background of Pluridimensional Dialectology (RADTKE; THUN, 1996; THUN, 2000, 2005, among others).