Phonetic and phonological vowel reduction in Brazilian Portuguese

Sejin Oh

doi:10.1515/phon-2021-2012

Abstract

The present study examines the phonetic and phonological status of vowel reduction in Brazilian Portuguese. In order to compare the effects of duration and metrical structure, we tested the influence of duration on the realization of /a/ in five prosodic positions: word-initial pretonic, word-medial pretonic, tonic, word-medial posttonic, and word-final posttonic. The results revealed that, while both phonetic duration and prosodic position had effects on F1 values for /a/, the categorical effect of prosodic position was much stronger and more reliable. In particular, F1 values for /a/ were best predicted by a two-way distinction between posttonic and non-posttonic syllable positions. Correlations between a vowel’s duration and its F1 frequency were statistically significant but generally weak in all positions. We argue that these findings suggest that vowel reduction in Brazilian Portuguese primarily reflects phonological patterning rather than phonetic undershoot, although there was also evidence for some amount of undershoot. Brazilian Portuguese can therefore be said to have a mixed system of phonological and phonetic reduction. The present study discusses the results in the context of Brazilian Portuguese metrical organization, sound change, and the relation between phonetics and phonology.

Keywords: Brazilian Portuguese; phonetics-phonology interface; vowel reduction

Corresponding author: Sejin Oh, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016, USA; and Haskins Laboratories, 300 George Street, New Haven, CT 06511, USA, E-mail: soh@gradcenter.cuny.edu

Funding source: Graduate Center, City University of New York

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the editor Catherine Best, and anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback. I also wish to thank Jason Bishop, Jason Shaw, the audience at ICPhS 2019, the members of the UCLA Phonetics lab, and the audience at the 175th ASA meeting for their insightful discussions. Additionally, I am thankful to Edward Forgacs and João Marinotti for their assistance in this endeavor.

Research funding: This research was partially funded by a Doctoral Student Research Grant from the Graduate Center, City University of New York.
Conflict of interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Statement of ethics: All subjects who participated in the study have given their written informed consent. The study protocol has been approved by the CUNY CSI HRPP office. The protocol number of this study is 2016-1404.

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