Análise variacionista da vocalização da lateral palatal em Papagaios - MG

Abstract

The present work presents an analysis of the vocalization of the palatal lateral consonant in the community of Papagaios, Minas Gerais, using the methodology of Variationist Sociolinguistics (LABOV, 1972) and takes into account the Lexical Diffusion model (WANG, 1969). 1328 records of speech were obtained through twenty-four interviews with different informants from Papagaios. Vocalization of the palatal was detected in 19,7% of the data, which amounts to 262 occurrences of the variable. Phonological factors considered in relation to the palatal lateral were: preceding vowel, following vowel and position of the variable in relation to syllable stress. The lexical item was analyzed qualitatively and it has been shown that higher percentages of vocalization appear when the item is part of a crystallized expression and when it is part of old toponyms in the region of Papagaios. Social factors considered in relation to the palatal lateral were: gender (male and female), education level (elementary school, high school and university) and age (20-40 years and 40-60 years). The analysis of gender showed that this factor has opposite trends depending on other factors (education or age) it may relate to. The influence of three factors was detected, but the age factor results were close to neutral. The analysis results showed that the realization of the vocalized variant of the palatal lateral is influenced by social factors, by aspects of the lexical item and by phonological factors. These results favor the possibility to maintain the hypothesis that what might be happening in Papagaios is the introduction of the palatal lateral in a speech community where the vocalized pronunciation used to be categorical.