Fialho de Almeida: teratologias para uma língua nova

Fialho de Almeida: teratologies for a new language · Fialho de Almeida’s language, and especially his lexis, were the target of admiration and criticism even among his contemporaries, and, in more recent times, became the object of study and analysis. This article intends to take into consideration some processes of neological construction (namely, suffixation and loanword) in Fialho’s writing, on the basis of the critical definition of ‘teratology’ elaborated by the Portuguese linguist Júlio Moreira in the essay Estudos da Língua Portuguesa. Fialho’s linguistic effort, in addition to its aesthetic value, encourages readers to notice the need for malleability and transformation of the language, and works as a trigger for what he considers a «new language» in the making.