The language movement in the grammatica historica by Said Ali: the materiality in question

Abstract

This article, from a materialist discursive approach, makes a journey through the Grammatica Historica da Lingua Portugueza by M. Said Ali, discussing and analyzing the author’s descriptive investment in the comparison of different moments of Portuguese, from the premise of that “the study of words that disregard semantic alterations will no longer be historical” (SAID ALI, 1931, p. III, Prologue). In a perspective that opposes stagnant grammatical classifications and logicism, Said Ali reaches, in a very interesting way, to give visibility to the movement of the Portuguese language in its different uses throughout the history, highlighting, in the linguistic materiality, significant processes of dialogue between the speaker and the listener, without falling into communication reductionism.