A percepção das consoantes nasais na língua inglesa por falantes do português brasileiro

Abstract

This dissertation aims to investigate how Brazilian learners of English perceive nasal consonants in syllable-final (coda) position. The relevance of this study lies in the fact that inadequate perception of these sounds may compromise intelligibility and, consequently, effective communication in English, as accurate perception constitutes a fundamental stage in the learner’s phonetic-phonological development. By gaining a better understanding of how these difficulties manifest, the study seeks to contribute to pedagogical reflections aimed at improving the phonological perception of English language learners, thereby fostering clearer and more effective communication. Grounded in the Speech Learning Model (SLM) (Flege, 1995; Flege & Bohn, 2021), this study assumes that phonetic representations from the first language directly influence how sounds in an additional language are perceived, particularly when such sounds involve phonetic differences or contrasts that are absent in the learner’s L1. Within this framework, the study focuses on the perception of English nasal consonants /m/, /n/, and /ŋ/ in syllable-final position by speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. The study adopts a quantitative, descriptive approach. Data was collected through an auditory perception test designed based on minimal triplets containing nasal consonants in syllable-final position. The identification test was administered using the TP software (Rauber, Rato, Kluge, & Santos, 2012), in which participants identified the target sounds within sentences containing the target words. The results revealed that vowel context significantly influenced the perception of nasal consonants in coda position, but in the opposite direction of the initial hypothesis: words preceded by the vowel /ʌ/ showed greater perceptual stability and lower error rates than those preceded by /æ/. The position of the target word in the sentence (medial or final) did not exert a significant effect on participants’ performance. In contrast, sentence type proved to be relevant, as declarative sentences yielded higher perceptual accuracy than interrogative ones. Overall, the findings corroborate the assumptions of the Speech Learning Model by indicating that phonological differences between Brazilian Portuguese and English influence the formation of perceptual categories in L2.