Ortografia brasileira oitocentista nos livros didáticos e na Constituição de 1891: norma ou anarquia?

Abstract

This paper focusing on the orthography of 19th-Century Portuguese language seeks to investigate what orthographic system was used in elementary school textbooks then. Research corpus consisted of words taken from the 1891 Brazilian Constitution as well as words taken from three textbooks with a view to proving the hypothesis that orthographic rules were in effect at the time. Theoretical support was sought in the assumptions made by the História das Ideias Linguísticas (The History of Linguistic Ideas) in order to achieve the following goals: (1) to analyze spelling by checking the existence of any orthographic rules put forward by authoritative grammar books in those days; (2) to examine the occurrence of orthographic stability; (3) to verify to what extent orthography then can be regarded as pseudo-etymological . It was found that even though there was no orthographic norm in the late 19th Century there were rules in effect. Not only can this be proved by the orthographic stability of the words analyzed but also by their compliance with the orthographic proposals presented by the grammar books of that period. Moreover, the results have shown that there was an etymologizing attitude on the part of orthographers, which led to the dismissal of 19th-Century Portuguese orthography as being pseudo-etymological