Mario Pereira de Souza Lima: uma etapa de consolidação do pensamento gramatical brasileiro anterior à NGB

Abstract

This work, divided into three chapters, is a critical analysis of Mario Pereira de Souza Lima s Grammatica Expositiva da LÃngua Portuguesa (Portuguese Language s Expository Grammar), published in 1937 by Companhia Editora Nacional, as part of its Brazilian pedagogic Library (2nd Series - Textbooks 70th vol.), only reissued in 1945 by Livraria José Olympio Editora, under the title of Gramática Portuguesa. In the first chapter, the historical context around the emergence of the Grammatica Expositiva is recalled through the presentation of its background and corresponding references to the lines of grammatical and pedagogical thought which guided the publication of grammatical textbooks. The theoretical affiliation of the examined work is shown in the second chapter, where the influences on interpretation procedures adopted by Souza Lima are studied. Analysis of the structure of Grammatica Expositiva is made in a critical way in the third chapter, in order to assess the innovative character of the approach it makes on grammatical contents, its peculiarities being shown when confronted with two co-existing works: The Grammatica Expositiva by Carlos Eduardo Pereira and the Grammatica Secundaria by Said Ali, from facts and grammatical categorie s conceptualization criteria, in particular parts of speech and syntactic functions. As for educational aims and corpus profile, Souza Lima s grammar is characterized by examination of the concept of standard use adopted, mainly literary, with evidence, however, of concerns with language variation, with some indications of differences between Brazilian and Portuguese use. Also in this chapter, subjects accompanied by comments, especially to the new, to the descriptively more consistent, are selected. In conclusion, Souza Lima s work uniqueness in the context of grammatical studies carried on at the time of its publication is signaled, due to its innovative approach, particularly with regard to the examination s morphosyntactic perspective through which it begins