Aryon Rodrigues and the Línguas Gerais in the Linguistic historiography

Abstract

Aryon Rodrigues delves into different fields of knowledge. As a linguist, he describes several languages, especially those from the Tupi family; he worked on fieldwork data collection, he committed himself on training staff; he worked to give academic space to the Indian languages research; he supervised works as theses and dissertations. As a historian of these languages, he demonstrated erudition and deep knowledge of the specific documents in the existing national and international files. He establishes a dialogue with the European and Latin American academic production, playing a major role as a reference in this field. This paper highlights his contribution on a not very well known topic in Brazil: the línguas gerais that constitute a very important chapter of the social history of the languages because they are the evidence of the interethnic interactive dynamics, with implications in the regional and national memory. He points out this subject, bringing enlightenment on the two native línguas gerais that blossomed on the present Brazilian territories: the Língua Geral Paulista and the Língua Geral Amazônica.