Puru mex kumrẽx ‘a beleza das roças’: língua e etnobotânica na escola mẽbêngôkre

Abstract

This dissertation describes morphosyntactic and semantic aspects of the names of the main species of plants cultivated by Kayapó, a people who speak the Mẽbêngôkre language, a language belonging to the Jê family, a macro-Jê linguistic trunk (RODRIGUES, 1986). The bibliography referring to the studies in this language, in the academic scope, is minority, fact that justifies the incentive to the research in different areas of linguistics, among them, the morphology and the semantics. As a suitable place for the development of these studies, the municipality of São Félix do Xingu, in the State of Pará, favors contact with several indigenous communities in its territory. Through the study of the lexicon of Puru Mex (Beautiful Farm), its variety of species and analysis, based on linguistic theories, it was possible to describe the segmentation of grammatical and lexical morphemes within the field, dealing with the way of classifying species in the language and the main references used in the semantic construction of names. These data will be favorable to the development of teaching materials for schools in the Kayapó indigenous communities.