Minas Setecentistas: breve estudo sobre a pontuação em livros de compromisso das irmandades de Nossa Senhora do Amparo de Paracatu e de Diamantina

Abstract

The sociolinguistic characterization of the scribe is an obstacle that normally interposes itself to the linguist who is dedicated to the diachronic research. This often means that important registers of the language are no longer analyzed because it is not possible to retrieve information that allows tracing the socioeconomic and cultural profile of the scribe. This paper intends to minimize this difficulty by exploring the hypothesis that punctuation marks can be important clues to help the researcher to determine the scribe's level of schooling. The data analyzed provide two manuscripts of brotherhoods of Minas Gerais written in the second half of the eighteenth century by brown individuals belonging to a lesser social stratum. The results obtained indicate the adequacy of the hypothesis and suggest that there are more appropriate punctuation marks to determine the scribe's level of schooling, since they involve more complex rules of use.