Between “picadas” and “trilhas” in the North and South regions of Brazil: what the data of the Atlas Linguístico do Brasil Project reveal

Abstract

This work discusses rural traits in the vocabulary of speakers belonging to North and South regions of Brazil and aims to examine the perception of the urban speakers about referents of the rural universe and to check the different names attributed to them. The analyzed data correspond to answers of the questions 62 (names for “picada”) and 63 (names for “trilho”) of the Semantic-Lexical Questionnaire (SLQ) of the ALiB Project – Atlas Linguístico do Brasil. The used theoretical-methodological assumption was the multidimensional Dialectology (CARDOSO, 2010) which considers diatopic, diagenerational and diassexual dimensions and of Lexicology foundations (BIDERMAN, 2001; 1992). This study demonstrated as the most productive lexicals itens: seven variants to question 62 (picada), caminho, picada, estrada, pique, carreiro, trilha and trilho and six related to question 63 (trilha), caminho, estrada, trilha, vereda, carreiro and trilho, pointing at similarities and differences in the studied areas.