O fonema /z/ camaleão na língua Tenetehára: uma abordagem variacionista

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the phonological distribution of the phoneme /z/ in the Tenetehára language, which is spoken in the indigenous territories located in the states of Maranhão and Pará. In order to proceed with the analysis, we use the methods and the theoretical principles proposed by the Sociolinguistic and the Dialectology, whose main task is to deal with the variationist phenomenon as a result of the correlation among the linguistic variants and the social parameters. The analysis demonstrated that the phoneme/z/ can be realized by means of seven allophones, whose occurrences are constrained by linguistic and extralinguistic factors. We also address the issue concerning the challenge that such phonetic variation entails for the establishment of a coherent and uniform orthography.