A phonological study on diphthongization and monophthongization processes in Brazilian Portuguese

• Grant number: 18/16596-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: March 01, 2019
• End date: December 31, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Principal Investigator: Maria Filomena Spatti Sandalo
• Grantee: Lucas Pereira Eberle
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research is a study on diphthongization and monophthongization in Brazilian Portuguese, specifically the formation of diphthongs by the epenthesis of the semivowel [j] in syllables ending with "s" or "z" (eg: vez, ['ves] - [' vejs]), and the reduction of diphthongs [aj], [ej], [ow] and [uw] to a simple vowel through the loss of the glide. The objective is to verify the phonological reasons triggering these processes. The goal is to investigate these phenomena experimentally on the basis of corpora consisting of existing PB words and pseudo words (also called non-words) which are compatible with the PB lexicon. Moreoves, the MaxEnt program will be used to predict the process after modelling in Optimality Theory framework.