Normative Grammars

In the Portuguese-speaking world, grammatical description and prescription have been carried out separately for European and Brazilian standards. Over the first couple of decades of the 21st century, there has been a significant increase and diversification in the number of published grammars for each respective standard. Following a brief account of traditional grammars of Portuguese starting in the 16th century, we describe and assess contemporary normative and nonnormative Portuguese grammars, focusing on their (dis)continuity with the traditional grammatical paradigm. A few issues will be addressed, namely selecting a language variety as the basis for description/prescription, reconciling intra- and inter-standard variation with language prescription, adjusting the grammar to educated norms, especially in Brazil and devising a methodology of description and prescription. Finally, we examine how the attitudes and ideologies underlying discourse and the instruments of Portuguese standardization reveal romantic and rationalist cultural models of linguistic unity and diversity. It is argued that the greatest challenge for Portuguese grammars is the pluricentric codification of a (increasingly) pluricentric language, something absent from contemporary grammars.