Reflexes of the sound variation in a 18th-century text and in texts of Elementary School students: a comparative study

Abstract

This paper presents a comparison between phenomena of spelling variation, specifically, the oscillation of the unstressed pretonic vowels and reduction of falling diphthongs - in a manuscript text from the 18th century and in current texts, written by students of Elementary School Education. The comparative data analysis shows how some of the variations found in an preterit stage of Portuguese language are still present in contemporary texts of subjects learning. From this comparison, we discussed the importance of considering the notion of spelling norm, instability and writing representation, in order to understand the occurrence of variable forms and unstability in the two corpora.

Full-text of the article is available for this locale: Português (Brasil).