An ethnolinguistic study on names for “gambá” (skunk) in Brazilian Midwest Region: contributions from ALiB Project
Keywords:
Lexical norm, Midwestern Brazil, gambá, ALiB Project.Abstract
This study aims to investigate, according to geolinguistc and lexical-semantic views, the designations documented in Midwestern Brazil used to refer to “the animal that smells bad when it feels threatened”: gambá, mucura, jaratataca, mixila and raposa, extracted from ALiB Project database (question 71 of the Semantic-lexical Questionnaire) in order to verify the influence of extra linguistic elements on them, as well to investigate the relation between these names and the referent mentioned. The analysis showed a great relation between the social-historical aspects of the localities and the lexicon of their inhabitants, corroborating that language behaves indeed as a social product, disclosing features of elements of settlement and demonstrating that the linguistic norm in use shows the way of life and thinking of a certain community.