Seqüências de (oclusiva alveolar + sibilante alveolar) como um padrão inovador no português de Belo Horizonte

Abstract

This work evaluates sequences of (alveolar stop + voiceless alveolar sibilant) - ts, ds - opposed to sequences of (alveopalatal affricate + vowel i + voiceless alveolar sibilant) - tis, dis in Portuguese spoken in Belo Horizonte. This dissertation has as theoretical background Exemplar Models, Usage-Based Phonology and Articulatory Phonology. Thecorpus used for analysis comprises data from 16 participants, all university students 4 male and 4 female aged up to 25 years old and 4 male and 4 female aged over 35 years old. The data were submitted to statistical analysis using Minitab 14 software. The results of statistical analysis relates structural 2 social factors pointing out to a major tendency for the new variant when the alveolar stop is voiceless, that is, t, and when the sequence is at a word-boundary. The results concerning token frequency ratify the proposal of the Usage-Based Phonology which states that in cases of phonetically gradual sound changes, the more frequent words change before than the infrequent words. The analysis of the word factor showed that although token frequency is relevant it does not guarantee that the new pattern will occur. The individual behavior of the words signals that the change is lexically gradual and shows different variation rates in the same group of either frequent or infrequent words. As for the non-structural factors it was observed that the gender factorinfluences the occurrence of the new pattern: women tend to be more conservative concerning the variation under discussion. The results related to the age factor indicate that it may be an on-going change: the younger respondents have a higher rate in the use of the new variant than the older respondents. The individual factor analysis is also developed and shows that an individual behavior is more homogeneous than the group behavior. The data were submitted to acoustic analysis in Praat. The results show that there is a phonetic gradation between the variants tis, dis and the new variants ts, ds which corroborates the proposal of the Usage-Based Phonology and the Articulatory Phonology that sound change is phonologically gradual. The results also point out to the relevance of the variation in speech and the inclusion of the phonetic detail in the linguistic analysis which is one of the Exemplar Model claims.