Diphthongs in the Portuguese of Sao Tome e Principe

Author(s)

Alfredo Christofoletti Silveira

• 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: 2013-05-07

Examining board members

Gabriel Antunes de Araujo; Silvia Figueiredo Brandão; Flaviane Romani Fernandes Svartman

• Advisor: Gabriel Antunes de Araujo

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to investigate the realization of oral diphthongs in vernacular portuguese of Sao Tome and Principe (pvs). This variety of portuguese is in contact with other languages spoken in the country and differs from the linguistic system of the considered standard variety, the european portuguese (pe) (FIGUEIREDO, 2010; GONÇALVES, 2010; CHRISTOFOLETTI, 2011; SANTOS & CHRISTOFOLETTI, 2011). The hypothesis for the behavior of the phonetic-phonological system of pvs is the learning of portuguese as L2 (from recent past generations) (HAGEMEIJER, 2009; GONÇALVES, 2010), and the influence of contact with the creole languages spoken in the country, as the santome (FERRAZ, 1979), the principense (MAURER, 2009), angolar (MAURER, 1995) and kabuverdianu, since the communities are usually bilingual or living in multilingual environment. The intergenerational linguistic changes and the linguistic contact also justify the behavior in the realization of diphthongs that have variations in their realization in pvs. The corpus of this study consists of recordings of spontaneous speech of 18 informants, collected in the capital of stp through the assumptions of sociolinguistic theory and method (LABOV, 1991 [1972]). The reason to study the achievements of diphthongs, noted the uniqueness of its accomplishments, is to observe the behavior of a variant from portuguese in a multilingual environment; increase our knowledge of this variant; confront a system in diglossia; enable further studies on the pvs and compare it with other variants in the African countries witch have portuguese as official language. Regarding social variables, there is a link to the application of the process of monophthongization with the number of years of schooling, once that people with more time of school education tend to avoid monophthongization than people with less time of school education. Moreover, it was found the uniqueness of the phonetic-phonological system of pvs, because, unlike the pe (MATEUS & DANDRADE, 2000; MATEUS, 2002), considered prestigious in the country, pvs performs the monophthongization of diphthongs [eI ], as seeing in dinheiro [di\"ñeKU], primeiro [pri\"meKU] and feijoada [feZu\"ad5], it suggests an approach to behavior of Brazilian portuguese (pb) (cf. BISOL 1991, 1994; ARAÚJO 1999; LOPES 2002 e outros), however, monophthongization still occurs in contexts in both the variants whrer it is blocked as pb, as in the pe. So monophthongization occurs even when the following consonant is an voiceless alveolar occlusive [t], as in feitiço [fe\"tisU], leitão [le\"tãU ] e direito [di\"KetU], nons-documented fact in pb or pe. Regarding the diphthong [oU ] in pvs the monophthongization is categorical, as shown in studies on diphthongs variation in other varieties of portuguese. With respect to the diphthong [oI ] we observed that the variation in the application of monophthongization occurs only when it followed by the consonant [S], responsible for spreading the vocalic feature creating the glide [I ] through phonetic process. The diphthong [aI ] suffered variation in the monophthongization process, mainly before palatal consonant, in other contexts its occurrence was not very productive. Similarly, the diphthong [eU ] had a low rate of occurrence of monophthongization, and was kept in almost all contexts. The other diphthongs, [EI ], [EU ], [uI ] and [iU ], had rare occurrences, and it was impossible to observe variations in their realizations. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 10/14574-0 - Diphthongs in São Tomé and Príncipe's vernacular portuguese
• Grantee: Alfredo Christofoletti Silveira
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master