Historical grammar in Brazil of the 1930’s: an analysis based on the argument of influence

Abstract

 In a classic text of historiographic studies in Linguistics (“On the Problem of ‘Influence’ in Linguistic Historiography”), Konrad Koerner distinguishes the treatment of in­fluence and its role in the development of approaches to languages as one of the problematic questions in reconstructions of history. Taking this theoretical basis as a starting point and with Ismael de Lima Coutinho´s Pontos de Gramática Histórica (1938) as an object of analysis, we propose a case study focusing on the development of grammatical studies within the panorama of Brazilian production and reception of descriptive and analytical theories and methods, in order to arrive at an interpretation of a historically-based grammar production and to establish a historiographic narrative around the category of analysis called argument of influence.