Unlike most European languages (English, French, Spanish and Italian), the dictionaries of Portuguese language have many problems regarding their etymological data. Suffixal/ prefixal derivation and etymology are often mixed, so are etymon and remote origin, the etyma of unwritten languages are dealt with carelessly, Arab influence is greatly unknown, not to mention plenty of fanciful etyma which brings the etymological study out of the scientific spheres. Media and the Internet contribute to the dissemination of imaginative solutions and academic experts in Philology and Historical Linguistics cannot expose their conclusions on the subject. As with Stylistics, scientific etymological research was very productive until the 20�s of the 20th century, when it was at its best. However, historical and ideological events contributed to oblivion of many acquired techniques and results. Grounded in linguistic research, etymological studies returned in the 90's and today there are important tools to develop quality research at the academic level which can contribute to change society's view on the subject. In this sense, this research on dating of the earliest occurrences of Portuguese words, presented by NEHiLP, is the first step in order to create a new etymological dictionary of the Portuguese language.
Researchers who are dedicated to historical and diachronic aspects of the Portuguese language have been missing, for over twenty years, specialized books with which they can work, as the Oxford Etymological Dictionary of the English language, Le Robert for French, Cortellazzo & Zolli for Italian or Corominas, for Spanish. The most complete works that we have in Portuguese are some publications by Antonio Geraldo Cunha and Houaiss & Villar Dictionary (2001), which is not exactly an etymological dictionary (besides, the etymological data became more simplified in its second edition). The datings in those works, however, have pretty good quality, as concerning the Middle Ages (at this point those ones, especially before the 12th century, Jos� Pedro Machado�s work is also excellent and his solutions are mostly repeated in Houaiss & Villar), but from the 16th century on, the dating in these works are unfortunately very imperfect. There is almost a lack of position for the 17th, 18th and 20th centuries. The researchers of NEHiLP come from several research lines and they can promote a quality study to fill those gaps: there are Arabists (prof. Dr. Federico Corriente, Universidad de Zaragoza/ Spain, prof. Dr. M. Mamede Jarouche and Prof. Dr. Safa A.A.C. Jubran, DLO / FFLCH), Africanists (prof. Dr. Margarida M.T. Petter, DL / FFLCH, Prof. Dr. Francisco da Silva Xavier, Centre de Recherche de la Recherche Cientifique/Sorbonne IV), experts on Sanskrit and Indo-European (prof. Dr. Daniel K�lligan, Universit�t zu K�ln / Germany, prof. Dr. M�rio Ferreira, DL / FFLCH, prof. Dr. Jos� M. Marcos de Macedo, DLCV / FFLCH, prof. Dr. Josenir Alc�ntara de Almeida, UFC ), specialists in Late Latin and Romance Philology, especially in Ibero-Romance languages (Prof. Dr. Val�ria G . Cond�, DLCV / FFLCH; prof. Artur Costrino, UFPel), linguists who have extensive knowledge in many languages and morphological / stylistic theories, what allows a treatment with a large number of words derived by suffixing and prefixing in Portuguese (prof. Dr. Martin Becker, Universit�t zu K�ln / Germany, Prof. Dr. Gra�a M.O. S. Rio Torto, University of Coimbra / Portugal, prof. Dr. Bruno O. Maroneze, UFGD; Prof. Dr. Elis C. A. Caretta, DLCV / FFLCH, prof. Dr. M�rio Eduardo Viaro, DLCV / FFLCH, prof. Dr. Paulo Chagas, DL / FFLCH, prof. Dr. Aldo L. Bizzocchi, FMU, prof. Andr�a Lacotiz, FATEC/SP, Dr. Solange Peixe Pinheiro de Carvalho, FFLCH), philologists and experts on researchs involving historical problems of mediaeval and ancient Brazilian texts ( prof. Manoel M. S. de Almeida, DLCV / FFLCH,prof. Dr. Marcelo M�dolo, DLCV / FFLCH, prof. Dr. Phablo R. M. Fachin,DLCV / FFLCH, prof. Dr. Silvio A . Toledo Neto, DLCV / FFLCH, prof. Dr. Carlos Eduardo Mendes de Moraes, UNESP/Assis, prof. Dr. Nelson Papavero, MZ), specialists in digitalized corpora (prof. Dr. Michael J. Ferreira , Georgetown University / USA, www.corpusdoportugues.org; prof. Dr. Clotilde de Almeida Azevedo Murakawa and Dr. Mariana Giacomini Botta, UNESP/Araraquara, Dicion�rio Hist�rico do Portugu�s do Brasil - DHPB; Prof. Dr. Zwinglio de O.Guimar�es-Filho, IF/USP, resercher of the Research Group of the Portuguese Historical Morphology www.usp.br/gmhp/), specialists in Computer Science (Prof. Dr. Marco Dimas Gubitoso, IME / USP). Many of those researchers work in two or more research lines. 48 people altogether, professors, post-doctoral degree and students work on topics that concern directly the etymological study.
Research Center for Etymology and History of the Portuguese Language