Portuguese missionary linguistics: linguistic thought and grammatical theory in Luso-Oriental works of the seventeeth century

Abstract

The policy of the expansion and diffusion of Portuguese: in parallel with the precept of the Portuguese language, there was the learning of the languages of discovered lands. Firstly, it was an attempt to apostolise the mother tongue, and later, once gone the psychological era of the Crusades, it was a valued activity per se, within the scope of the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries' activities. Thus begun a process of grammatical disciplining of non-European languages. Setting out in the Portuguese Renaissance with a lexicography-type approach, this process was consolidated in the 17th century, a decisive moment in the elaboration of arts and grammars, of dictionaries and vocabularies of Far East and Amerindian languages, written in both Portuguese and Latin.