Produção das vogais altas /i/ e /u/ em sílabas postônicas finais no falar popular de fortalezenses

Abstract

The goal of this study is to analyze the production of the high vowels /i/ and /u/ in final post-tonic syllables in the popular speech of Fortaleza. We wish to investigate the phonetic variation in the realization of these vowels as a possible indicator of linguistic change in this variety of Brazilian Portuguese. Data used for the analysis are taken from the NORPOFOR - Oral Norm of Popular Portuguese of Fortaleza-CE database. The independent variables investigated are: age group, educational level, gender, influence of the stressed vowel, the nature of the preceding consonant, and word frequency. In 16 recordings of the DID type (Dialogue between Informant and Documenter), words ending in syllable-final unstressed /i/ and /u/ are inspected. We use Exemplars Theory (JOHNSON, 1997; PIERREHUMBERT, 2001; BYBEE, 2001; CRISTÓFARO SILVA; GOMES, 2004) as the theoretical basis for the analysis and for the interpretation of the data. It is one of the premises of this theory that experience impacts mental representations, which are defined probabilistically over all instances of the category attested in language use. This study is also based on Acoustic-Articulatory Phonology (ALBANO, 2001), investigating the possible influences that consonants can have on the realization of the high vowels under study. The acoustic analysis of the data is done with the PRAAT program, while the quantitative analysis is carried out in R. We found a high rate of vowel deletion in the data, especially regarding the front vowel /i/, while the mixed-effects logistic model revealed that the only significant independent variables are those that relate to the preceding vowel (manner of articulation and voicing), with fricatives, affricates, and plosives, especially the voiceless ones, favoring the deletion of the vowels in focus.