Repetition in historical corpora as a written inability index

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss the repetition of words in writing by unable hands, from a corpus consisting of data from Bahian sertanejos (1906-2000), writers in the initial writing acquisition phase, whose edition is available in Santiago (2011; 2012). Repetition is one of the inabilities in alphabetic writing dimensions proposed by Barbosa (2017), for a historical corpora characterization. In the letters of the sertanejos, the presence of this dimension is another indication that they are spontaneous texts, without planning and revision, coinciding in the writing of the poor writers with other characteristics, such as those related to escriptuality (lack of knowledge concerning to graphic standard conventions); the presence of a phonetic writing, and lesser motor skills, which may indicate a greater distance from the models of conventional writing. In texts like those, the writers convey on writing, the cohesion and coherence devices related to the speech, and the repetitive segments can be expressing similar functions to the oral language grammar, as Dutra (2003) has shown, through data from children’s essays, and Marcuschi (1996) with oral data. To understand better some of the reasons that gave rise to the repetitions made by the letters’ writers, the examples are distributed according to the possible functions they are communicating, to the light of basic functions identified for oral texts such as, cohesive relations in the text level, understanding, topical continuity, argumentative structure and interactivity relations in the discursive level.