O deslocamento das fronteiras linguísticas no processo da formação da Língua Geral Amazónica
Shifting Linguistic Boundaries in the Formation of the Língua Geral of Amazon

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this study is to analyse the changes in the historical development of languages in colonial Amazonia resulting from contact between the various indigenous languages of the local population and the language of the European coloniser, i.e. Portuguese. The contact between the those peoples and a coloniser with very different traditions and cultures led to the formation of a language called Língua Geral Amazónica (LGA) in the 17th century, spoken generally in Brazil, but which began to decline in the 19th century in favour of Portuguese. To achieve this objective, we are trying to find all of the mechanisms in the process of interaction between the indigenous people and the colonisers that caused the shifting of linguistic boundaries in the process of the formation of the general language under analysis. In our work, we focus on the case of the shifting of linguistic boundaries that occurred in the Jesuit missions, in which a language from the Tupi branch of languages was imposed on the Tapuia Indians, whose language originated from a completely different linguistic branch.

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