Speech rhythmical restructurings in Brazilian Portuguese

Author(s)

Alexsandro Rodrigues Meireles

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
• Defense date: 2007-09-02

Examining board members

Plinio Almeida Barbosa; Jose Olimpio de Magalhães; Maria Filomena Spatti Sândalo; Sandra Madureira; Maria Bernandete Marques Albuquerque

• Advisor: Plinio Almeida Barbosa

Abstract

The present thesis deals with speech rhythmical restructurings due to speech rate variation in Brazilian Portuguese. Rhythmical restructuring is considered as a reorganization of stress groups along the utterance due to speech rate variation. Speech rate variation, on the other side, is one of the greatest causes of phonetic change, since this speech chain¿s perturbation makes possible to evaluate the possibilities of variation which would reveal new stable patterns. In order to explain how speech rate change modifies the rhythmic structure of speech, the thesis was split into three different parts. The first part presents the theoretical background on which our experiments were based upon. In this part, it is introduced the thesis¿ main theoretical motivation, the application of Dynamical Systems Theory to language. Its theoretical basis is found in the Articulatory Phonology (Browman & Goldstein, 1992) and the Dynamical Model of Rhythm (Barbosa, 2006). Both models are used as our experiments¿ theoretical basis. The second part, after presenting some basic notions about rhythm, presents an acoustical and an articulatory experiment which reveal rhythmic variations on sentences in which speech rate was varied. The acoustical study¿s main results in stretches with rhythmical restructurings are: a) the number of VV units (vowel-to-vowel) increases proportionally to speech rate increase; b) the stress group¿s duration tends to be constant with speech rate increase; c) the standard deviation of VV units¿ duration, as well as the stress groups¿ duration, is smaller at fast rates. On the other hand, the articulatory study, through the use of a magnetometer (EMMA), reveals that speech rate tends to affect all gestures in a utterance, independently of the VV unit phrasal position. The third part works with lexical rhythmic variation. Specifically, variation/ change from antepenultimate stress words to penultimate stress words is studied. Firstly, historical aspects of this lexical variation/change is presented, then, an analysis by the light of Articulatory Phonology is presented. In order to do so, two studies were made: an acoustical and an articulatory one (EMMA). The acoustical study¿s main conclusion is that antepenultimate stress words variation to penultimate stress words is influenced by speech rate. Higher probability of penultimate stress words forms is to be expected at fast rates. Nevertheless, there are individual/dialectal factors involved, since there are speakers who never produced such forms at fast rates. On the other hand, the articulatory studies were used to corroborate the previous acoustical results, for coarticulation increase between post-stress consonants with speech rate increase would explain the perception of antepenultimate stress words as penultimate stress words, especially at fast rates. Finally, this thesis shows how dynamical explanations of linguistic phenomena like linguistic change and variation may come to reconcile phonetic and phonological aspects of language. Specifically, it presents how speech continuous variations through speech rate increase are able to modify speech¿s rhythmic structure and take part in linguist change/variation (AU)