Aspectos do fenômeno crase: perspectivas histórica, gramatical e uso no português

Abstract

This survey’s purpose is a foray into historical linguistics, about the phenomenon of crasis, aiming to explain its emergence in our language and the reasons for its standardization in writing. This explanation is based on the processes of change that have been taking place in the Portuguese language and for this is accomplished a critical, reflective and investigative study of the phenomenon. It is necessary to observe, dissect, analyze and speculate the causes of linguistic phenomena and, to that end, “three are the ways for the historical study of languages: back to the past and focus on it, back to the past to illuminate the present or study the present to illuminate the past.” (FARACO, 2005, p. 118). In this work, we have followed the second way, carrying out a study of the past as a way to clarify the present, assuming that the current state of affairs had a source and becomes understandable when we can explain it, detailing the history flow which resulted in the current situation. To this end, it was made a bibliographic search, mainly in historical linguistics, which assumes both historical and epistemological referential place in the long history of raising and development of the concept of crasis. At the same time, we have discussed the issue in a synchronic point of view: what are the facts of language, in current usage, which causes the phenomenon of crasis? We have discussed the issue of the relationship between what is crasis, in real terms, by commenting points of literature and spelling convention that traverse the facts to suit them to what you learn in school. According to the normative grammar of the Portuguese language, crasis is the fusion or overlap of two aa, with the purpose of avoiding a disagreeing pronunciation. According to Bisol (2002), since ancient times, the language tends to undo gaps within words and this trend expanded in archaic Portuguese phrase which, by combining words, gave rise to a number of other processes, including this one, which, in the literature, is seen as a process of vowel sandhi. The study aims to “explore new areas where problems do not have crystallized enough” (MANZO, 1971:32, in: LAKATOS, 2010, p. 166), providing the examination of the theme under new focus, what will come, perhaps, to innovative conclusions about this phenomenon, whose record, in Portuguese, is only in written language, as well as contributing to a better characterization of what we currently mean by crase, favoring its use and, consequently, the teaching of this phonetic-syntactic phenomenon in classroom.