The change in production of medial coda fricatives by a child from Recife living in João Pessoa

Abstract

This study compares the production of medial coda fricatives of a 10-year-old participant from Recife who currently lives in João Pessoa-PB, with the production of four children of the same age (two from João Pessoa and two from Recife), who never left their speech communities, in order to analyze to what extent the child who moved to João Pessoa-PB assimilated the local dialect. The variable was selected due to the difference between the behavior of the fricative in Recife-PE, where the palatalized form is predominant (MACEDO, 2004), and in João Pessoa-PB, where the alveolar form is predominant (HORA, 2003). Speech samples were collected through phonetic inquiry, monitored reading and semi-structured interview. The words for the two first instruments were chosen considering the phonological context that came before and after the coda fricative, which in turn were considered as independent variables for the application of the rule of palatalization. The fricatives were analyzed in Praat (BOERSMA and WEENINK, 2009) considering the spectral peak, which indicated the degree of palatalization (HENRIQUE et al., 2015), considered as a dependent variable. The results show that the fricatives produced by the participant from Recife living in João Pessoa did not present a significant difference in relation to the children from João Pessoa, unlike the ones produced by the children from Recife. It was inferred, therefore, that the child assimilated the dialect of the community in which she currently lives, which only has the coronal context /t/ and /d/ as a trigger for palatalization. We analyzed these results in the light of the process of acquisition of the fricative segment in coda by children (OLIVEIRA, 2002; MEZZOMO, 2003; BERTI, 2006) and of new perspectives in Sociolinguistics regarding the speech community (LABOV, 2008 [1972]; GUY, 2000).