Maria Carlota Rosa

Grapheme-phone transcription algorithm for a Brazilian Portuguese TTS

This paper describes one of the aspects of an ongoing research to improve the synthetic speech quality for a Brazilian Portuguese text-to-speech synthesis system. This paper focuses on the grapheme-phone transcription algorithm. A complete set of rules for every grapheme is presented. Experimental results, obtained running the proposed algorithm through a text database, gave rise to 98,43% of accuracy rate.

Un recorrido por el acervo filmográfico de la Secretaría de Salud de México

Since the late 1920s, cinema has been a popular tool in health education in Mexico; over the years, it functioned as an efficient means of propaganda through which the State and public health authorities promoted their projects and re-created the image of a healthy, modern country on screen. The article presents the results of an effort to recover and catalogue the Mexican Department of Healths film archive, an endeavor that allowed for the reconstruction of a list of national and international films screened and produced in Mexico from 1943 to 1960, especially from the United States.

Ancient medical texts, modern reading problems

The word tradition has a very specific meaning in linguistics: the passing down of a text, which may have been completed or corrected by different copyists at different times, when the concept of authorship was not the same as it is today. When reading an ancient text the word tradition must be in the readers mind. To discuss one of the problems an ancient text poses to its modern readers, this work deals with one of the first printed medical texts in Portuguese, the Regimento proueytoso contra ha pestenença, and draws a parallel between it and two related texts, A moche profitable treatise against the pestilence, and the Recopilaçam das cousas que conuem guardar se no modo de preseruar à Cidade de Lixboa E os sãos, & curar os que esteuerem enfermos de Peste. The problems which arise out of the textual structure of those books show how difficult is to establish a tradition of another type, the medical tradition. The linguistic study of the innumerable medieval plague treatises may throw light on the continuities and on the disruptions of the so-called hippocratic-galenical medical tradition.

A Arte da língua de Angola (1697) e a gramática latina de Manuel Álvares (1572)

Resumo: O romance Vida e Morte de M. J. Gonzaga de Sa, de Lima Barreto, revela uma serie de discussoes com relacao a nacao e a identidade nacional. A personagem Gonzaga de Sa e seu amigo, narrador do romance, Augusto Machado, apresentam um debate contundente e consciente sobre a complexidade de nossa situacao pos-colonial e de nossa identidade cultural, que recebeu, nao sem embates, diasporas de todos os cantos do mundo. Gonzaga de Sa e Machado nos ensinam que a discussao sobre o preconceito racial deve, necessariamente, passar pelo questionamento da fronteira, que se coloca como inquestionavel, e tambem do proprio campo da cultura. Problematica esta presente, em chave teorica, nos estudos contemporâneos de Stuart Hall, Edward Said, entre outros. Palavras-chave: Lima Barreto; diaspora; identidade cultural. Abstract: The novel Vida e Morte de M. J Gonzaga de Sa, by Lima Barreto, reveals a number of discussions concerning the concepts of nation and national identity. The character “Gonzaga de Sa” and his friend, the novel’s narrator, Augusto Machado, present the scathing and conscious debate about the complexity of our post-colonial situation and of our cultural identity, which received, not without struggles, diasporas from all the corners of the world. Gonzaga de Sa and Machado teach us that the discussion about racial prejudice must, necessarily, pass through the questioning of the border, which presents itself as unquestionable, and also of the culture’s field. This problematic issue is presented, in the theory key, in the contemporary studies of Stuart Hall, Edward Said, among others. Keywords: Lima Barreto; diaspora; cultural identity.Resumo: O Cortico, de Aluisio Azevedo opera uma analise patologica das relacoes interpessoais e socioeconomicas entre os brasileiros e os imigrantes portugueses pegos naquele atoleiro de lutas interminaveis da decadente burguesia brasileira da segunda metade do seculo XX . E evolucao desse microcosmo da republica elevado ao estatuto de progenitor e mentor de individuos e classes sociais, parece corresponder aos estagios enunciados na Teoria da Classe Ociosa de Thorstein Veblen, sobretudo na progressao da cultura pacifica/ predatoria a fase da classe ociosa propria. Este estudo confronta os dois textos, com recurso ocasional a teoria da funcao social do jogo, elaborada no Homo Ludens de Johan Huizinga, no que parece uma perfeita simbiose entre a literatura realistanaturalista e uma teoria socioeconomica de cunho darwinista, o conjunto levando a protagonizacao de membros das classes subalternas da sociedade brasileira, e produzindo a personagem impar de Rita Baiana, numa inusitada caracterizacao literaria do afro-brasileiro como objeto e sujeito. Palavras-chave: classe ociosa, cultura predatoria, sociedade brasileira, afrobrasileiro objeto/sujeito literario.

Revendo uma das críticas às descrições missionárias

This paper discusses a continuously repeated statement aboutthe traditional grammatical descriptions which says that theyreduced the structures of all languages to the structure of Latin.The discussion is based on the analysis of three languagedescriptions written in the 17th century by Jesuitical missionaries.From these grammatical works a different sense for the expression“identical to Latin” emerges: a set of structural aspects to whichthe grammarian could not fail to give attention.

A propósito de se rever um algoritmo de transcrição para o português brasileiro: considerações sobre o Vocabulário Ortográfico da Língua Portuguesa (1998)

This paper focuses on the second edition of the VocabularioOrtografico da Lingua Portuguesa, the reference book for BrazilianPortuguese orthography. The new edition, published in 1998, hasabsorbed a great number of foreign words with their originalspelling. There follows from that novelty a confusing guide toPortuguese orthography.

Regimento proueytoso e modus curandi: edição dos textos

This issue features facsimiles of Regimento proueytoso contra ha pestenenca and Modus curandi cum balsamo, based on the original texts housed in the Biblioteca Publica de Evora and the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, respectively. Semi-diplomatic editions of both facsimiles - with transliterations into modern characters - have also been provided. These are followed by translations, in the case of Regimento from old to modern Portuguese and in the case of Modus curandi from Latin to modern-day Portuguese. This text explains the criteria used in preparing the semi-diplomatic versions and in modernizing the text of Regimento.

Regimento proueytoso contra ha pestenença: glossário

The main goal of the following glossary is to work as a support to the reading of Regimento proueytoso contra ha pestenença. For this reason it includes every word in the text. However, since it may interest one concerned with the history of Portuguese, the glossary was supplied with additional information on orthography and on the original form of the words.

Uma coleção gramatical setecentista

This article analyses an anonimous 18th century grammar catalogue.Besides raising the most obvious issues on authors and tides ofgrammars, the manuscript evokes problems related to the commerceof printed books, and to the emergence of public libraries in Europe.

Línguas bárbaras e peregrinas do Novo Mundo segundo os gramáticos jesuítas: uma concepção de universalidade no estudo de línguas estrangeiras1

Abstract In this paper I explore the reflection of the religious context in the concept of universal grammar as it is presented in four missionary grammars written by Jesuit priests in Brazil: Anchieta (1595), Figueira (1621?), Dias (1697) e Mamiani (1699). In the last few decades linguists have seen the return of the expression universal grammar to the literature, as a consequence of the influence of Noam Chomsky’s work. The hypothesis of a common core for all languages has its roots in a tradition which goes back to the Middle Ages. In the Christian West it was thought that the endowment given by God to Adam was uncovered by the confusion of tongues, as a punishment for the Tower of Babel. Therefore the concept of universality in those grammars has its grounds in a very different framework from the chomskyan UG. Abstract In this paper I explore the reflection of the religious context in the concept of universal grammar as it is presented in four missionary grammars written by Jesuit priests in Brazil: Anchieta (1595), Figueira (1621?), Dias (1697) e Mamiani (1699). In the last few decades linguists have seen the return of the expression universal grammar to the literature, as a consequence of the influence of Noam Chomsky’s work. The hypothesis of a common core for all languages has its roots in a tradition which goes back to the Middle Ages. In the Christian West it was thought that the endowment given by God to Adam was uncovered by the confusion of tongues, as a punishment for the Tower of Babel. Therefore the concept of universality in those grammars has its grounds in a very different framework from the chomskyan UG.