Prosódia e ensino da língua Tikuna: uma proposta a partir do estudo de narrativas

Abstract

The starting point of this dissertation are the historic struggles of the Tikuna people, and more general aspects of the Tikuna language, allied to a concern for human experience in the context of the individual, social-interactional, and cultural activities. It seeks to provide subsidies for the teaching of the mother language with the study of prosody features in the Tikuna language through different textual genres/ discourse genres. The aims are: a) the linguistic study of narrative and speech in the form of songs, including prosody features; b) the study of the relation between prosody and teaching, from a perspective linked to a problem in the Tikuna written language: punctuation. A reason is sought for the fact that the Tikuna people reject punctuation in texts written in Tikuna language, particularly the comma. Two types of texts were analyzed – a narrative text and a song, which belongs to the Tikuna song for cultural dissemination. Based on the analysis of the oral narrative text, the hypothesis raised is that the long / lengthened final syllables in the final position are important to delimit prosody sequences, more-so than pauses, which, when present, compose a syllabic time, which is fulfilled by long/ ultra-long duration syllables most of the time. The narrative text was studied, considering different transcriptions to record it, such as translations, rhythm, and regular patterns in syllabic duration. In the Tikuna song for cultural dissemination, syllabic durations are also addressed. Based on the systematic organization of the results and the conclusion reached, a proposal for a set of classes is presented at the end, as part of the indigenous school education, and includes the prosody of the Tikuna language in Elementary School activities.