Concerning the History of Portuguese Grammar as a Foreign Language (17th – 19th centuries)

The Corpus of Portuguese as a Foreign Language Grammars (PFL) – www.corpusgramaticalple.uevora.pt is a research project at the University of Évora which is dedicated to studying and valuing the grammatical tradition of Portuguese as a Foreign Language (PLE). It focuses in particular on digital applications that make such heritage accessible to those who work in related fields, such as foreign language teaching, translation and interpretation.

This project consists of the registration and inventory in digital form of metalinguistic PFL sources  – grammars, manuals and conversations guides -, dated between the 17th and 19th centuries, whose historiographical study and linguistic analysis are still to be undertaken mainly because of the modest and tardy investment by the Portuguese, especially when compared to that of other Romance languages.

The sources under study, which constitute the Corpus, are limited to Portuguese grammars, manuals and conversation guides which have a foreign language point of view; i.e. grammar texts in Portuguese, mostly written by foreigners and, depending on the target audience, written in several European languages (English, French, Italian, Spanish and German). The context in which these texts emerge from the middle of the 17th century onwards is the diffusion of teaching / learning of foreign languages from the Renaissance period, along with the significant increase throughout Europe in the publishing of non-native language manuals and teaching methods.