Três fontes, seus fios d’água e o Grande Rio: reedição de A linguagem dos cantadores, de Clóvis Monteiro

Abstract

We present the process of organizing the enlarged and annotated edition of the book by Clóvis Monteiro “A linguagem dos cantadores, segundo textos coligidos e publicados por Leonardo Mota: contribuição para o estudo do português popular no Nordeste do Brasil” (1933). Three documentary sources were used to prepare this new edition: 1) the first edition of the book, from 1933 (we had access to a copy that contains some handwritten notes by the author); 2) the songs collected in the book by Leonardo Mota “Cantadores: poesia e linguagem do sertão cearense” (1921); and 3) 2.000 lexicographic cards annotated by Clóvis Monteiro. The articulation of these three sources made it possible to cross the word indexes and the lexicogrammatical notes of the original book with expanded transcriptions of the songs documented by Leonardo Mota; such improvements bring new light to the study, with contextualization of the data from the first edition. We also included in this new edition manuscript additions made by the author in the handwritten copy and new entries in the etymological study index, based on lexicographical sheets that we found. The most significant contribution of this work is to offer the public broader and more detailed access to the entire universe of references of the study by Clóvis Monteiro; the first publication contains much less detail than would have been possible if the full extent of the working material had been used from the beginning.