Lexicografía implícita en textos del Padre Jesuita Fernão Cardim (c.1548–1625)

The pedagogical production of the Portuguese missionaries focused on three major areas, namely ‘grammar’, ‘catechism’ and ‘dictionary’. However, in other types of works, there were also forms of metalinguistic activity meaningful to missionary linguistics. For instance, although travel narratives and descriptions of exotic nature had different aims from those of lexicons, they show a number of similarities with dictionaries, allowing them to possess some implicit lexicography.

This study analyzes a specific text – Tratados da Terra e Gente do Brasil (Treaties of the Land and People of Brazil) by Father Fernão Cardim (1540/1548?–1625), a Jesuit missionary in Brazil – aiming at describing both the typology of definition and the linguistic processes which draw Cardim’s text closer to lexicography. Furthermore, it also aims at showing that the descriptive definitions of exotic plants and animals go beyond the linguistic domain, thus constituting a true paralexicographic exercise.