Dialectology and the history of language: on the genesis and conditioning of some features of current varieties of Portuguese

Abstract

This paper aims to describe historically four phenomena which currently show dialectal or social variation, and whose diachronic development, seen in the geographical location of their documentary evidence, leads us to believe that, in other periods of Portuguese linguistic history, they were found more generally throughout the country, especially in more peripheral dialects. The study underlines the need for a historical and geo-sociocultural framework for any linguistic phenomenon that currently shows variation within Lusophone areas, thus emphasizing the importance of an interdisciplinary vision when describing such features.