Velhos caminhos e novos horizontes : a descoberta do português brasileiro na gramaticografia italiana da língua portuguesa

As part of a larger research project aimed - in the wake of Tarallo’s original and fruitful insight - at reconstructing the history of the emergence of Brazilian Portuguese through the production of grammatical compendia of the Portuguese language published both in Brazil and abroad, this paper focuses specifically on the earliest, tentative signs of Brazilian variants within Italian grammatical works. Drawing on three grammars of the so-called “Portuguese-Brazilian” language published in Italy during the first half of the 20th century, the analysis presented here does not limit itself to looking at the phenomena that appear to be gradually – and at times almost unconsciously - shaping a distinct Brazilian Portuguese still in its embryonic form, but also considers these features in light of how they were described in various grammatical and linguistic studies produced in Brazil, both before and after the Italian texts. In doing so, it contributes indirectly and retrospectively to an unexpected and, in certain respects, illuminating dialogue between past and present understandings of this linguistic variety.