DA ANATOMIA HUMANA AO LÉXICO: AS DESIGNAÇÕES PARA A RÓTULA DO JOELHO NO BRASIL COM BASE EM DADOS DO PROJETO ALiB

Abstract

his dissertation aimed to investigate the relationship between the lexicon of the Portuguese language, with emphasis on human anatomy, focusing on the names assigned to question 117 of the Semantic-Lexical Questionnaire (QSL), formulated as follows: what is the name of the round bone that is located in front of the knee (NATIONAL ALiB PROJECT COMMITTEE, 2001, p. 30). This Master's research is part of a larger Project, of national scope, the Linguistic Atlas of Brazil Project (ALiB Project), whose main objective is to describe the Brazilian linguistic reality with regard to the Portuguese language. The dissertation was elaborated based on materials collected in loco by the research team of the ALiB Project, carried out with still unpublished data and the research obtained a work authorization granted by the National Committee of the Linguistic Atlas Project of Brazil. The corpus studied was constituted through interviews with 1100 informants, belonging to the 250 locations selected by the project and spread across the five regions of Brazil: North, Northeast, Southeast, South and Midwest. The selected informants have the following profile: in each location, two men and two women with different age groups were interviewed. Age group I covers informants from 18 to 30 years old and II includes informants from 50 to 65 years old. In the capitals, there is stratification by level of education. In this way, in the interiors, four informants were questioned who had incomplete fundamental level and, in the capitals, four more were added who had completed university level. The data were analyzed from a theoretical-methodological point of view through the biases of Dialectology, Lexicology and Semantics. The results achieved bring simple and compound lexias as denominations for the referent studied, such as: kneecap/kneecap; knee cracker/cracker; pataca / knee pataca / knee pataca / knee pataca; patella; ball/knee ball; knee frame/knee frame; wheel/knee wheel/wheel/knee wheel; knee cap; potato/knee potato; meniscus; paw; chicochoelo; knee pussy; knee head; knee alley; knee puppet; knee joint/joint; dish/knee dish; nightjar and knee disc. There is a set of idiolectal use lexia that are grouped in other denominations. The data are exposed in different sections dedicated to each of the lexias and also include quantitative data that appear registered in tables and graphs that point out the linguistic and diatopic variation. The lexicographical research resulted in partial collection of data from works in Portuguese and specialized in human anatomy. Finally, the results by geographic regions are described and also revealed in linguistic charts by region and by capitals of Brazil, pointing to: (i) patella/knee patella registration; biscuit/knee biscuit and patella as items present throughout the country with greater or lesser amplitude, the latter being more frequent in data from state capitals and (ii) identification of metaphorical motivating processes in part of the lexical items. In addition to the presence of kneecaps throughout Brazil, two major Brazilian dialect areas were identified: (i) area A – which encompasses the North and Northeast regions, characterized by the presence of wafer/knee wafer, and (ii) area B – which encompasses the Southeast, South and Midwest regions, characterized by the presence of pataca/pataca do genie/patacão/patacão do gene.