A pontuação nas Minas setecentistas

Abstract

The subject of this paper is a study about punctuation signals found in eighteenth century manuscripts from the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The reason for this choice is the small number of studies that have a descriptive character (ROCHA, 1996; 1997). Besides, there are few studies which deal with this subject from the perspective of historical sociolinguistics. Moreover, we did not find, in the current literature, research of this kind with corpus of Minas Gerais. Our hypothesis refers to the possibility of characterizing the scribe of the past when we analyze the punctuation used in old manuscripts. The observance of the norm in this period for the use of these signals may be related to schooling/degree of literacy of the scribe. Our objective was to study the punctuation signals found in the manuscripts from the eighteenth-century and to verify the existence of any differences concerning the use of these signals and if it related to the socioeconomic group of the scribe. As a parameter for the characterization of the norm of this period, we use grammars and manuals of the Portuguese language from the XVIII and XIX centuries. We also consulted two manuals, the first one is from the XVII century, and the second one is from the XX century, in order to verify if the inconsistencies regarding the use of these signals in the manuscripts are associated with the norms of these periods. We used four documents of Minas: one Order Third statute and three Brotherhood commitment book, all of them dated from the second half of the eighteenth century. The Order Third represents the school group, because it contains members of the cultural elite in this century. The Brotherhoods represents the non-school group, because they contained members of lower social classes. In a general analysis of these data, we find in all documents there are more standards than not-standards occurrences. However, when comparing the results of each punctuation signal, we found that for some of them -- ponto-e-vírgula, dois-pontos e duplo-travessão -- non-standards occurrences are more common than standards occurrences in the documents that were written by the non-school group, with the exception of the commitment book of Nossa Senhora do Amparo, from the city of Paracatu. It proves, in part, our hypothesis. We confirmed partially our hypothesis, but some punctuation signals and their diverse use are important to characterize the scribes level of literacy and schooling.