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| Author(s): |
Denise Pozzani
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Master's Dissertation |
| Press: | Campinas, SP. |
| Institution: | Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem |
| Defense date: | 2011-08-07 |
| Examining board members: |
Eleonora Cavalcante Albano;
Maria Filomena Spatti Sândalo;
Cesar Augusto da Conceição Reis
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| Advisor: | Eleonora Cavalcante Albano |
| Abstract | |
The aim of this study is to investigate palatalization of alveolar stops before [i] in a Brazilian Portuguese dialect, namely, that spoken in Jundiaí, a town in the state of São Paulo. Affricates occur in many dialects of Brazilian Portuguese as allophonic variation in such a context, while in others dialects alveolar stops are undergoing change towards them, as they are considered a prestige variety. Affricates present some instability in their borders, and a complex temporal structure. Thus, our goal is to describe phonetic detail in the affrication process, in a group of speakers who are implementing such a linguistic change, due to daily travels to Campinas. Studies by Leite (2004, 2010) show the dialect spoken in Campinas is considered less stigmatized and more "intermediate" than others from the same state. Encouraged by these results, we conducted five case studies with speakers from Jundiaí. Preliminary data of this five male students showed that affricates have continuous characteristics between alveolar stops and their post-alveolar counterparts. First recordings were made in a reading task. At different speech rates, subjects read a set of texts with words that had alveolar stops before the front high vowel. In addition, samples were also recorded in a word repetition task, with the following controlled variables: word frequency of occurrence in the language and syllabic stress. We measured spectral moments (FORREST et. al. 1988) and compared those measures to the spectral moments of a set of alveolar and post-alveolar fricatives. Conservative speakers were expected to prefer the alveolar productions, and less conservative ones were expected to prefer either post-alveolar or an intermediate production. The analyses were divided as follows. At first, we conducted a cross-sectional study, in witch we compared fricatives and affricates articulation of the five subjects using Analysis of variance (ANOVA) for repeated measures, followed by post-hoc test Tukey for discrimination of articulation place. Statistical analysis showed the behavior of each spectral parameter. Secondly, we conducted a longitudinal analysis of two subjects over a year. Descriptive statistics of spectral moments of three data session showed their speech at different stages, using different "repair" strategies; it also showed sufficient variation so as to indicate instability in affricate implementation. It also was observed, by changes in speaking rate, which subject were more consistent in the uses of innovation. To complement the phonetic analysis, interviews were conducted, in order to gather some of their attitudes toward their own dialect. Gestural Phonology (BROWMAN & GOLDSTEIN, 1992, 1995, GOLDSTEIN & FOWLER, 2003) has proven to be adequate for describing and modeling the gradient processes involved this variation. Since its theoretical postulates capture the dynamics of speech production over small stretches of time, we hope they also help illuminate the dynamics of language change (AU) | |
| FAPESP's process: | 08/02356-9 - Overlap and coordination among articulatory gestures in gradient allofony of alveolar stops in Brazilian Portuguese: data from a dialect spoken in Jundiaí-SP |
| Grantee: | Denise Pozzani de Freitas Barbosa |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships in Brazil - Master |