The construction of a Linguistic Atlas of Brazil: the path of ALiB
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5433/2237-4876.2009v12n1p237Keywords:
Dialectology, Geolinguistics, Brazilian Portuguese, Dialectal methodology.Abstract
One of the difficulties found in the construction of a linguistic atlas is related to the time spent to do it. Considering this difficulty and thinking of a Brazilian linguistic atlas, some questions can be asked: What is it like to prepare an atlas of a continental country? How can we deal with the distances of such a huge territory? How can we establish a deadline to prepare the atlas without being sure whether the funds for the research will be kept or not? The ALiB project is to be developed in four phases and it is in keeping with methodological principles set by the National Committee, between 1996 and 2002, which establish the profile and the number of informants, the network of points and the types of questionnaires that will be used for the corpus. These criteria enhance the positive balance that the construction of the ALiB has given the Geolinguistics in Brazil, especially the implementation of numberless works in this area, what justifies the proposal of a fourth phase (CARDOSO; MOTA, 2006) for the history of the Brazilian Dialectology, which also comprehends other parameters, besides the diatopic one, thus configuring the Multidimensional Dialectology.