João de Barros and Evanildo Bechara: the parts of speech from the perspective of the historiography of linguistics

Abstract

This article falls within the scope of the Historiography of Linguistics (HL) and is based on the theoretical assumptions of Koerner (1996 and 2014), Swiggers (2010), and Batista (2019), since we believe it is imperative in the linguistic analysis of any work to take into account linguistic parameters, the language itself, and extralinguistic parameters, namely, the context of production, circulation, and reception of a work, as these are factors influencing the theoretical approaches of their authors. Regarding the objective of this research, therefore, we intend to present a comparative analysis between the categorization of the lexicon in João de Barros’s Grammatica da Língua Portuguesa (1540), which he classifies as parts of the sentence, and in Evanildo Bechara’s Moderna Gramática Portuguesa (2009), which he describes as word classes. Our aim is to verify the continuity or discontinuity in the linguistic thought of the Humanist/Renaissance figure João de Barros and the prominent contemporary grammarian in Portuguese grammar in Brazil, Evanildo Bechara. The justification for selecting these primary research sources is based on the fact that the Grammatica da Língua Portuguesa is the cornerstone of Portuguese grammar. The second reason is that it cites the work of João de Barros, *Diálogo em Louvor da Nossa Linguagem*, a constituent part of Barros’s grammar, in the introduction to his work entitled “Breve História Externa da Língua Portuguesa” (Brief External History of the Portuguese Language), thus establishing a link between the two grammars.