Vowel-to-vowel gradient relation in brazilian portuguese

Author(s)

Laudino Roces

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
• Defense date: 2010-12-03

Examining board members

Eleonora Cavalcante Albano; Wilmar D'Angelis; Ricardo Melina de Figueiredo; José Olimpio Magalhães; Beatriz Raposo de Medeiros

• Advisor: Eleonora Cavalcante Albano

Abstract

This work, studied the relations V-V in in Brazilian Portuguese VCV sequences. The literature about coarticulation classifies the coarticulation V-V in perseveratory or carryover assimilations, however, we found perseveratory dissimilation effects. The qualitative tests shows that the subjects, in general, presented resulted so much for the assimilation processes as for the dissimilation processes, although, we cannot say that all the subjects make use of the dissimilation process in yours strategies. The percentage of assimilation occurrence was of 21% in F1, 34% in F2 and 21% in F3 and for the dissimilation it was of 15% in F1, 4% in F2 and 9% in F3. There is, therefore, predominance of dissimilation. The quantitative tests pointed the relationship of assimilation/dissimilation processes with the stressed position (V2). In V1 (prestressed) all vowels received significant influences of the adjacent vowel (V2). In the stressed position, the vowels /i/ and /u/ didn't show significant results. The quantitative tests showed that the assimilation has a preference for the prestressed position (V1), while the dissimilation only occurs in the stressed position, despite the great susceptibility of the vowels in prestresse position to coarticulatory influences pointed in literature. The qualitative studies have confirmed that preference, showing a higher incidence of significant associations between assimilation and preaccentual position and the occurrence of some significant associations between the dissimilation process and the accentual position. The result shows that the process of dissimilation occurs preferentially in F1. This preference can be explained by another important finding of this study: indications of a compensation process in the stress position. Some of the values in Hz for F1 of mid vowels are lower in data with focus rather than the data without focus. Data without focus have lower durations when compared with data with focus. According to the literature more time would necessarily have to be accompanied by a rise in the value of F1. The relationship between the two types of compensation - found points to a complex strategy to restore the quality of the vowel despite the opening of the jaw associated processes is V-V. Thus where the vowel should be kept intelligibility, the longest or coproduction of segments could cause the obliteration of some distinctions. The retraction of the root of the tongue offset these effects in the mid vowels, which are relatively close together in acoustic-auditory terms. Finally, the variability of the behavior of the processes indicated in this study points to explanations based on dynamic models of speech production, in which fluctuations and compensation are the norm rather than exception. The study shows that one can't expect a completely predictable behavior gradient vowel-to-vowel processes, but trends and directions under the influence of several variables whose behavior we could not control in the experiments (AU)