A influência da idade na aquisição de seis vogais do Inglês por alunos brasileiros

Abstract

The production of the English vowels [iː ɪ ɛ æ uː ʊ] by Brazilian learners who were in the last semester of their English courses, had begun studying English at different ages and had never lived nor studied English abroad was acoustically analyzed. Their vowel spaces, based on F1 and F2 values, were compared to those of 10 native speakers of English. The results showed that the Brazilian learners tend to group the pairs of vowels [iː ɪ], [ɛ æ] and [uː ʊ] into one single prototypical phonological category influenced by Portuguese, i.e. [i], [ɛ] and [u], respectively. This tendency was clear even among the younger learners and it tended to augment with the increase of age of onset, showing that the age factor influences, yet does not detine, the acquisition of English vowels by Brazilian learners.