GEOSSOCIAL VARIATION OF THE LEXICAL ITEM ‘RIACHO/CÓRREGO’ IN BRAZILIAN CITIES

The aim of this study is to analyze and map the lexical variation of the lexical item riacho/córrego from the point of view of the multidimensional dial*ectology (THUN, 2000), thus integrating them to the methodological framework of geossociolinguistic (RAZKY, 2004; 2013). The data analyzed here, in the geossocial perspective, make up a knowledge base on the Brazilian Portuguese of the national project Linguistic Atlas of Brazil - ALiB. The extraction of lexical data follows a homogeneous methodological protocol that characterizes the ALiB corpus. It about the question number 001 of the Semantic-Lexical Questionnaire (QSL). The exploratory analysis comprises a total of 200 informants distributed in 25 Brazilian cities and based on a social stratification selection of informants (age, sex and education) proposed by ALiB Committee (2001). The results point to a productive variation in diatopics and diastratics terms. The item riacho/córrego features 21 variants, the most productive are riacho, córrego and igarapé. The variant riacho is prevalent in the northeast, southeast (except Belo Horizonte) and south, while córrego prevails in the Midwest, and igarapé in northern Brazil. Social influence is more relevant for riacho and córrego lexical variants and appear more frequently in the responses of informants of the second age group, males, from higher education