Measuring and parameterizing lexical convergence
and divergence between European and Brazilian
Portuguese
Augusto Soares da Silva
Abstract
Following the model provided by the sociolectometrical and sociolexicological
study that Geeraerts, Grondelaers, and Speelman (1999) performed for Netherlan-
dic and Belgian Dutch, the present study investigates the relationship between the
vocabulary of European Portuguese and that of Brazilian Portuguese. Focusing on
the lexical field of clothing terms and that of football terms, two main issues: are
addressed by means of the quantitative methodology developed by Geeraerts et al.:
whether the two national varieties of Portuguese have gone through a process of
lexical convergence or divergence in the last 60 years; and which internal linguis-
tic parameters influence this process.
Keywords: European and Brazilian Portuguese, lectal variation, lexical sociolec-
tometry, lexical variation, onomasiological variation, pluricentric languages, quan-
titative corpus sociolexicology, synonyms
- Introduction
This paper aims to present the main aspects and results of a research study
into the lexical relationship between European Portuguese (EP) and Brazil-
ian Portuguese (BP). There are two main issues: (i) to know whether these
two national varieties of the Portuguese language have gone through a
process of lexical convergence or divergence in the last 60 years; and (ii) to
find out how internal linguistic parameters influence these global conver-
gence or divergence trends.^1 Both issues involve a diachronic analysis, an
external one for the former and an internal one for the latter. Internal para-
meters include endo-/exogenousness and foreign influence (loanwords).
Other item-related and concept-related features will also be analyzed. Addi-
tionally, this study provides some insights into the synchronic issue of lexi-