Análise de novas unidades lexicais sinalizadas no âmbito do Curso Letras Libras da Universidade Federal do Tocantins

Abstract

This study seeks to understand the process of creating new Signed Lexical Units (ULS) of the Brazilian Sign Language (Libras). For this, we selected the academic environment of the Literature Libras course at the Federal University of Tocantins (UFT), Porto Nacional campus as a field of investigation. This scenario was chosen due to the influence of Libras linguistic studies as a natural language and the laws that guarantee its circulation as a Brazilian language, which allowed it to enter the academic world, and with it, the emergence of new ULS. In this panorama, our research problem emerges: understanding the process of creating new ULS in this context. The corpus consists of materials such as UFT institutional videos, in Libras, videos from the exchange of information between members of the academic community on a social network, and also printed material. The proposal was initially to show the existence of new ULS in these media and carry out the analysis of their creation process. We base the work in the light of lexicological, sociolinguistic and morphological studies, areas of linguistics that include language changes and variations, social transformations, the phenomenon of insertion of new words in a language in contexts of different social groups, the internal structure of signs and rules that determine their training. In addition, theories and public policies covering Libras helped us in this process. Theorists like Alves (1994), Biderman (2001) Preti (1974), Brazil (2002, 2005), Ferreira Brito (1995) Quadros (2004), Strobel (2008) Skliar (1997), Sacks (1990), Castro-Junior (2011), Felipe (2006), Faria-Nascimento (2013), Jonhson and Schembri (1999), Zeshan (2003) guided us along the way. We adopted bibliographic research as a methodological guideline, as it deals with materials available on the internet and in a social network group, as well as interviews with deaf members of the deaf community targeted by the research in order to validate the meanings of some signs. Altogether twenty (20) ULS were analyzed, from the context addressing issues such as the creation process to which they are inserted, and the influences that led the process. The results revealed the existence of four main morphological processes for the creation of new ULS: by derivation from the meaning of the base: Hand Configuration and Articulation Point; ULS of the Flexion process by phonomorphemic and number change; ULS of the Simultaneity Composition process, and ULS of the Classifier process: Lexicalization of mimetic actions Lexicalization of geometric shapes.