Morphological competence and historical genesis

boundaries between diachrony and synchrony

Abstract

This paper proposes a review of some Portuguese morphological processes relying on a synchronic approach, but taking into account some aspects from the historic genesis of words (that is, diachronic ones) under the form of the [±erudite] feature. Thus, the present work discusses epistemological and methodological characteristics of both synchronic and diachronic linguistics, aiming at making this interface workable. Afterward, this paper makes some remarks on the role of Latin in the composition of Portuguese lexicon as both mother-language and adstratum-language. Finally, this work analyzes the morphological behavior of three Portuguese suffixes – -al, -ar e -(i)dade – in order to show the applicability of the proposed analysis. In short, this paper argues that, by considering that word formation is sensitive to historic genesis aspects, it is possible to provide explanations in a more elegant and systematic way for a range of phenomena, treated as idiosyncratic.