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| Author(s): |
Amanda Macedo Balduino
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Master's Dissertation |
| Press: | São Paulo. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) |
| Defense date: | 2018-02-22 |
| Examining board members: |
Gabriel Antunes de Araujo;
Ana Lívia dos Santos Agostinho;
Rui Rothe Neves;
Flaviane Romani Fernandes Svartman
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| Advisor: | Gabriel Antunes de Araujo |
| Abstract | |
The aim of this study is to describe and analyse the vocalic nasality of the Portuguese spoken in São Tomé (PST) and of the Portuguese spoken in Príncipe (PP). PST and PP are Portuguese language varieties from São Tomé and Príncipe (STP) presenting particular linguistic caracteristics (GONÇALVES, 2010; CHRISTOFOLETTI, 2013; BRAGA, 2018). Considering the linguistic contact context into which PST and PP are inserted and knowing the requirement of a wider linguistic investigation dedicated to these varieties, we intend to (i) describe and propose a phonological analysis of tautosyllabic contrastive nasality in PST and PP; (ii) investigate the presence of heterosyllabic nasality and then suggest a phonological analysis for these processes, and (iii) compare the results with the same phenomena in Santome and LungIe, autochthonous languages, and with analogous studies on European Portuguese (EP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP). We adopted laboratory phonology as methodological approach (OHALA, 1995), and the corpus for analysis was constituted by recordings in STP. In total, the data was composed by 1,684 lexical itens (822 for PST and 822 for PP) which could present (i) tautosyllabic contrastive nasality; (ii) possibility of heterosyllabic nasality and (iii) nasality in boundary words and phrases. The words were recorded inside carrier sentences such as Eu falo X baixinho (I say X lowly) and Eu falo X (I say X), where X was replaced for the target item. By using the software Praat (BOERSMA & WEENICK, 2015), we extracted the duration of oral vowels (V) and tautosyllabic nasal vowels (VN) from minimal pairs which showed this opposition in miliseconds. The data analysis, based on phonological segmental and suprassegmental parameters, indicates that VN is, on average, 48% longer than V in PST and 56% longer in PP. Assuming nasal vowel lengthening as an indication for biphonemic structure for contrastive nasality in PB (MORAES & WETZELS 1992), the lengthening identified in PST and PP allows us to evaluate contrastive nasality also as biphonemic /VN/ in the varieties examined. Thus, V is longer, since it is the result of a deletion of the consonantal coda /N/. This process is followed by the dissemination of the [+nasal] feature into the previous vowel in CV tier, which maintains the syllabic temporal unit because of this phenomenon (GOLDSMITH, 1976; CLEMENTS & KEYSER, 1983). Lastly, heterosyllabic nasality in unstressed lexical itens was not identified in the data examined, and the heterosyllabic nasality in stressed words evidenced an optional character. This performance approximates the studied varieties to Santome and LungIe and indicates a singular structure for PST and PP, confirming them as proper varieties different from PE and PB. (AU) | |
| FAPESP's process: | 15/25332-1 - A comparative study of the nasality in Santomense Portuguese and in Lung'ie and Santomé |
| Grantee: | Amanda Macedo Balduino |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships in Brazil - Master |