Brazilian portuguese syllable structures: a typologicalaanalysis

Author(s)

Luciana Ferreira Marques

• 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: 2008-09-04

Examining board members

Didier Sheila Jean Marie Demolin; César Augusto da Conceição Reis; Paulo Chagas de Souza

• Advisor: Didier Sheila Jean Marie Demolin

Abstract

Language, the natural expression of human beings, has been studied for at least two millennia. However, the scientific community still disagrees in considering the study of natural language (i.e. linguistics), as a science. Certainly the way it has been studied in the past influences this opinion. The dichotomy between language and speech attributed to Saussure (1970), still guides a substantial part of the research in linguistics nowadays. This dichotomy has been arising great debates in the linguistic world. If a researcher chooses to study speech, he/she will likely not deal with language and vice versa. However, in the last few decades, this perspective has been changing, under the impulsion of researchers like Ohala (1990) and Lindblom (1986) who perpetuate the foundations already established at the beginning of the 20th century by Rousselot (1904). This does not mean that a more substance-based linguistic trend denies every statement made in contemporary phonological theory. Instead, it rather searches to prove them based on the paradigms of experimental science. Speech data, allow making robust analyses of linguistic phenomena, and experimental paradigms apply particularly well to these phenomena. This is the perspective adopted by this thesis. Based on language typology, and on the frame/content theory of speech (MACNEILAGE, 1998; 2008), this study aims to situate Brazilian Portuguese in the syllable typology of the worlds languages, in order to show how its syllable patterns respect certain sensorial, physiological and neurological constraints.. In order to achieve this goal a data base of Portuguese words divided into syllables was made. This data base was then analyzed with a program specifically developed for typological studies of syllables. Some linguistic phenomena such as labial-central, coronal-frontal and dorsal-back associations and the L.C. (labial-coronal) effect are discussed within the frame/content theory framework. (AU)