Distribuição de sons róticos em variedades do português em países africanos

Abstract

This study aimed at establishing and comparing the distribution of rhotics of five Portuguese African varieties (Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe), while also determining similarities and differences with regard to the Brazilian and European varieties, based on the acoustic analysis of 18 sociolinguistic interviews. It was found that the system of rhotics in the analyzed varieties is similar to that of European Portuguese. However, divergent patterns were found, such as the occurrence of (1) tap in all phonological contexts, including at the beginning of a word; (2) fricatives in coda position in Cape Verde; (3) variation between trills, velar and uvular fricatives at the beginning of words in Angola; (4) epenthetic vowel in consonant clusters and in coda; (5) deletion of final rhotics in São Tomé and Príncipe. A multiplicity of variantes and the pervasive occurrence of the tap may be an indicator of change to a single rhotic system.