A variationist sociolinguistic analysis of vowel harmony in Brazilian Portuguese in the dialect of Porto Alegre
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14393/DL23-v10n3a2016-1Keywords:
Vowel harmony, Pretonic vowels, Sociolinguistic variation, Vowel raisingAbstract
The present study investigates, in Brazilian Portuguese, the variable raising of mid vowels in pretonic context, when followed by a high vowel in the adjoining syllable, referred to as vowel harmony, as in av[e]nida~av[i]nida, p[o]lítica~p[u]lítica. The data analysed quantitatively was based on Variationist Sociolinguistics, Labov (1965,1972). The topic has already been the subject of studies by other scholars in Brazil, such as Bisol (1981), Schwindt (1995), and Casagrande (2003). The sample of this work is part of Projeto Variação Linguística do Sul do País (VARSUL). It consists of interviews with 19 young informants, aged 16 to 23, from the city of Porto Alegre, RS. An attempt to generalize results was made with other studies. Statistical analysis showed that vowel harmony rule has a relatively low use amongst the population studied, and raising of vowel /e/ is slightly more frequent than raising of vowel /o/. With regard to possible generalizations through comparative study, the analysis allowed two: a contiguous vowel in the next syllable following the mid vowel, and the stresslessness of the target vowel, which favor the raising of both pretonic vowels. According to the results, the harmony rule has remained as a stable variable as verified in previous studies.
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