Devoiced vowels in Brazilian portuguese: an acoustic-articulatory investigation

Author(s)

Francisco Meneses

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
• Defense date: 2012-04-06

Examining board members

Eleonora Cavalcante Albano; Vera Pacheco; Wilmar D'Angelis

• Advisor: Eleonora Cavalcante Albano

Abstract

This paper examines the production of devoiced vowels in Brazilian Portuguese. The goal is to depart from a dynamic view to show that there are vowel traces in the signal of devoiced syllables, a fact which weakens the hypothesis of vowel syncope. In addition, we seek a theoretical synthesis of the acoustic cues found in order to relate them to devoiced vowel articulation. To this end, an acoustic-articulatory analysis was performed from the recording of read carrier sentences. The sentences were read by six female subjects, from Vitória da Conquista - BA, without speech or hearing problems. The recordings were performed in an acoustic booth, using a digital recorder. The instrumental analysis was performed using the PRAAT software. The following measurements were made: the duration of the syllable and its fricative noise, the centroid of the noise and the values of formant centralization ratio (FCR) and vowel space area (VSA) of vowels in devoicing context. The results show that there is gradient devoicing manifested in three ways: both the duration measurements and the first spectral moment measures showed that the vowel gesture cues remain in fricative noise signal; FCR and VSA data show that vowels undergo great magnitude reduction in the devoicing context. The results indicate an effect of overlapping gestures, rather than vowel syncope. This hypothesis would not fit into traditional phonological descriptions, which usually deal with symbolic operations. The phenomenon under study can thus then be illuminated by Gestural Phonology (BROWMAN AND GOLDSTEIN, 1992; BALL AND KENT, 1997; ALBANO, 2001), which, as opposed to traditional representation, is able to express gradients, as it incorporates successfully the factors of timing and magnitude, directly related to the idea of articulator movement (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 10/04902-0 - Study of devoicing vowels in brazilian portuguese: efects of the CV and VC relationship.
• Grantee: Francisco de Oliveira Meneses
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master