Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T12:42:04.987Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Brazilian Portuguese vowel nasalization: secondary aspects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

John M. Lipski*
Affiliation:
Kean College of New Jersey

Extract

The process of vowel nasalization in Portuguese has been a fascinating topic for investigation since the earliest days of Romance philology, and much energy has been expended to determine the origin, development, and contemporary manifestations of the Portuguese nasal vowels. Despite the large amount of scholarly activity devoted to the nasal vowels, however, surprisingly little attention had traditionally been paid to the manner in which they are recognized and produced by native speakers, other than a few traditional phonemic analyses. More recently, aspects of the Portuguese nasal vowel system have been investigated within the framework of generative phonology, with a view toward motivating a series of highly abstract structures underlying the forms of modern Portuguese; as a consequence, more attention was paid to the various details of the vowel nasalization process. The present paper is offered as an addition to the synchronic studies of Portuguese vowel nasalization, since the nasalization process presents several unique peculiarities which warrant a more detailed investigation. The object of this report is to bring up for discussion several aspects of vowel nasalization in Portuguese which have either been neglected in the literature, or which have received incomplete or conflicting descriptions. Other than an introduction to the general problem OI the Portuguese nasal vowels, no attempt will be made at reanalyzing areas which have been adequately covered in other studies, even when the opinions of the present writer differ radically from those of other investigators.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1975

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abreu, Maria Isabel, & Rameh, Clea 1966 Português Contemporâneo. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Andersen, Hennino 1972 Diphthongization. Language 48.1150.Google Scholar
Brasington, R. W. P. 1971 Noun pluralization in Brazilian Portuguese. Journal of Linguistics 7.15177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dahl, Ivar 1964 The pronunciation of Brazilian Portuguese. In Honour of Daniel Jones, edited by Abercrombie, David (London: Longmans), pp. 3139.Google Scholar
Dalcado, Sebastião Rodolpho 1900 O dialecto Indo-Português de Goa. Revista Lusitana 6.6384.Google Scholar
Feldman, David M. 1967 A comparison of the segmental phonemes of Brazilian Portuguese and American Spanish. Linguistics 29.4457.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Charles A. 1963 Assumptions about nasals. Universals of Language, edited by Greenberg, Joseph. Cambridge: M.I.T., pp. 4247.Google Scholar
Foley, James MS Nasalization as a universal phonological process. Unpublished manuscript, Simon Fraser University.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966 Synchronic and diachronic universals in phonology. Language 42.50817.Google Scholar
Hall, Robert A. Jr. 1943 The unit phonemes of Brazilian Portuguese. Studies in Linguistics 1, no. 15.16.Google Scholar
Head, Brian F. 1965 A comparison of the segmental phonology of Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin.Google Scholar
Hensey, Fritz 1968 Questoes de fonologia gerativa: as regras de pluralização. Estudos Lingüísticos 3.110.Google Scholar
Houaiss, Antônio 1958 Tentativa de descrição do sistema vocálico do português culto na área dita carioca. Anais do Primeiro Congresso Brasileiro de Lingua Falada no Teatro, pp. 217317.Google Scholar
Lacerda, Armando De & Hammarström, Göran 1952 Transcrição fonética do português normal. Revista do Laboratorio de Fonética Experimental (Coimbra) 1.11935.Google Scholar
Lacerda, Armando De & Head, Brian 1962 Análise de sons nasais e sons nasalizados do português. RLFE 6.571.Google Scholar
Lacerda, Armando De & Rossi, Nelson 1958 Particularidades fonéticas do comportamento elocucional do falar de Rio de Janeiro. RLFE 4.5102.Google Scholar
Leite De Vasconcellos, José 1970 Esquisse d’une Dialectologie Portugaise. Lisbon [1901].Google Scholar
Lightner, Theodore M. 1970 Why and how does vowel nasalization take place? Papers in Linguistics 2.179226.Google Scholar
Lipski, John 1973a Binarity and Portuguese vowel raising. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 40.1628.Google Scholar
Lipski, John 1973b The surface structure of Portuguese: plurals and other things. Linguistics 111.6782.Google Scholar
Lipski, John 1973c Portuguese vinho: diachronic evidence for biphonemic nasal vowels. Acta Linguìstica Hafniensia 14.243251.Google Scholar
Lipski, John 1973d On the evolution of Portuguese -āo. Vox Romanica 32.95107.Google Scholar
Lipski, John 1974 The reduction of falling diphthongs: towards a theory of feature hierarchies. Forthcoming in the Revue Roumaine de Linguistique.Google Scholar
Lüdtke, Helmut 1953 Fonemàtica portuguesa, II: vocalismo. Boletim de Filologia (Lisboa) 14.197217.Google Scholar
Mattoso Câmara, Joaquim Jr. 1953 Para o Estudo da Fonémica Portuguesa. Rio de Janeiro.Google Scholar
Moráis-Barbosa, Jorge 1961 Les voyelles nasales portugaises: interprétation phonologique. Proceedings of the 4th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (Helsinki), pp. 691708.Google Scholar
Moráis-Barbosa, Jorge 1965 Etudes de Phonologie Portugaise. Lisbon: Junta de Ultramar.Google Scholar
Naro, Anthony J. 1971 Resolution of vocalic hiatus in Portuguese: diachronic evidence for binary features. Language 47.38193.Google Scholar
Nobiling, Oskar 1903 Die Nasalvokale im Portugiesischen. Die Neueren Sprachen 11.12953.Google Scholar
Reed, David W. & Leite, Yolanda 1947 The segmental phonemes of Brazilian Portuguese: standard Paulista dialect. Phonemics, by Pike, Kenneth, pp. 194202. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan.Google Scholar
Saciuk, Bohdan 1970 Some basic rules of Portuguese phonology. Studies Presented to Robert B. Lees by his Students, edited by Sadock, J. and Vanek, A., pp. 197222. Edmonton: Linguistic Research.Google Scholar
St. Clair, Robert N. 1971 The Portuguese plural formation. Linguistics 68.90102.Google Scholar
Strevens, P. D. 1954 Some observations on the phonetics and pronunciation of modern Portuguese. RLFE 2.529.Google Scholar
Thomas, Earl W. 1969 The Syntax of Spoken Brazilian Portuguese. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.Google Scholar
Vasquez Cuesta, Pilar & Luz, María Albertina Mendes Da 1961 Gramática Portuguesa. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
Veith, Werner 1970 Universalität und Sprachimmanenz bei binären und ternären Merkmalmodellen. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 37.280304.Google Scholar
Williams, Edwin B. 1962 From Latin to Portuguese. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1938; 19622.Google Scholar