The phonetic-phonological mapping of final unstressed vowels in Brazilian Portuguese
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14393/DL22-v10n2a2016-3Keywords:
Final unstressed vowels, Perception and production, Phonetic and phonological levels, Portuguese phonologyAbstract
The functioning of unstressed vowels is, according to Câmara Jr. (1977), “one of the most intricate problems of Portuguese phonemics in Brazil”. In final unstressed position, the weakest of the word, the seven stressed vowel triangle of the phonological system of the language is reduced to the three peripheral vowels /a, i, u/ (CÂMARA JR., 1970, 1977; BISOL, 1981, 2002, 2003). These vowels that remain in the syllables with higher degree of stress in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) are the most frequent in the phonological inventories of languages (MADDIESON, 1984) and the first to emerge in children’s language acquisition process (RANGEL, 2002) . The phonetic forms that such vowels take on in BP tend to be centralized ([I, U, ]), even though some variation may be found in southern Brazil between high and mid ones (golp[I] ~ golp[e]; camp[U] ~ camp[o]). Taking into account the possible asymmetry when BP final unstressed vowels are considered, the mapping between the phonetic and phonological levels of the language is the focus of this study. In the discussion, a previous investigation that had been carried out in southern Brazil is reviewed: four informants were submitted to linguistic perception and production tests, whose data were interpreted by means of constraints with the support of the BiPhon Model (BOERSMA, 2007). Results were formalized to represent the grammar that is responsible for the PB native speakers’ representation of the final unstressed vowels.
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