Comentários sobre a estrutura fonológica dos ditongos nasais no português do Brasil

Abstract

In this paper, I intend to show that the hypothesis according to which nasal diphthongs in BP originate from lexical /VGN/ sequences, as was proposed by Câmara Jr., is incompatible with some general properties of the phonological grammar of PB. Particularly, one consequence of the proposal of Câmara Jr., which is that sequences consisting of an oral vowel followed by a hetero-syllabic nasal vowel (Coimbra) and sequences representing nasal diphthongs have identical lexical representations (cãimbra), generates serious descriptive problems, which cannot be solved in a satisfactory manner. Therefore, the hypothesis of an underlying /VGN/ representation for nasal diphthongs is rejected. Instead, it is shown that only a very ´concrete´ lexical representation of nasal diphthongs is compatible with the facts of stress and syllable structure of BP.