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Publication
Lexical and semantic variation in contemporary spoken portuguese in urban Funchal and rural areas of Madeira Island
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Authors
Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
This paper aims to provide a dialectal and sociolinguistic approach and description of the use of
the lexical and semantic regionalisms in contemporary spoken Portuguese in urban Funchal (the
capital of Madeira) and in four rural areas of the island. The study of the lexicon and its semantic
variation is based on recent samples of a semasiological questionnaire, applied to stratified
informants by sex/gender, age group and level of education. The correlation of the results with
the extralinguistic factors, geographical origin of the respondents on the island and sociocultural
variables from the qualitative analysis and the quantitative point of view confirm that speakers
from urban areas are less conservative than those from rural areas and showed flexibility and
variability as well as stability of lexical meanings, two opposite and complementary lexicon
characteristics. The traditional lexicon of Madeira studied highlights the coexistence of dialectal
forms, some of them common to the Azores and Brazil, with European Portuguese standard
variants. Therefore, the qualitative and the quantitative expression of the knowledge of Madeiran
regionalisms and their lexical and semantic variations expose their vitality and support the
heterogeneity of the European Portuguese language and the identity of the Portuguese spoken
on Madeira Island.
Description
Keywords
Lexical dialectology Sociolinguistics Madeiran regionalisms Urban and rural varieties Cognitive semantics Spoken portuguese on Madeira Island . Faculdade de Artes e Humanidades
Citation
Nunes, N. N. (2021). Lexical and semantic variation in contemporary spoken portuguese in urban Funchal and rural areas of Madeira Island. Journal of Portuguese Linguistics, 20: 4, pp. 1–31.