O alçamento da vogal média anterior pretônica no português brasileiro: uma abordagem no modelo de redes

Abstract

This research aimed to study the pretonic raising in Brazilian Portuguese under the cognitive perspective of the Network Model (BYBEE, 1985, 1995, 2007, 2010), with additional theoretical contributions of the Usage-based model (BYBEE, 1988, 1994, 1999, 2001, 2006) and the Exemplar Model (PIERREHUMBERT, 1994, 2001a, 2001b, 2002, 2003, 2012). In order to observe the pretonic raising in detail, the object of study was restricted to mid front vowels in the verbal morphology. We argue that inflected verb forms allow verbal categorization and that the paradigmatic equivalence among the vowels [E], [e] and [i] in tonic position in the inflected verbal forms offers the possibility of this alternation to be propagated for the pretonic position in BP. The evaluation of the alternation distribution between mid front and high front vowels showed morphophonological patterns in the verbal system of BP. Morphophonological networks emerged from paradigmatic similarity and equivalence which were established among the verbs based on three types of connections: morphophonological, morphological and phonological. These connections indicated the dynamic organization and self-organization of the verbal paradigm of BP. From the analysis of the effects of frequency, we suggest that the pretonic raising is operated by analogical mechanisms which affect initially the low frequency lexical items and by mechanisms of phonetic motivation which affect initially the high frequency lexical items, associated to the raising of pretonic final vowels. Both mechanisms lead to a convergence of lexical diffusion patterns. That is, the pretonic raising in Brazilian Portuguese characterizes a dynamic and complex phenomenon that interacts at various levels of grammatical organization on which two converging forces act: analogical motivation and phonetic motivation which justifies its instability and regularization difficulty.