The role of phonological processes in determining the vowel inventory of Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

This article deals with the non-final posttonic vowel subsystem of Brazilian Portuguese, specifically it questions if the high-mid vowels /e, o/ have undergone neutralization in this position. Three accounts have been provided so far to answer this question. Câmara Jr. (1999) proposes that the nonfinal posttonic subsystem is composed of four vowels /i, e, a, u/; Bisol (2003) advocates for a three-vowel subsystem /i, a, u/, and Ribeiro (2007) defends a five-vowel subsystem /i, e, a, o, u/. In this paper, I show that mid-vowel alternation in nonfinal posttonic context is the key to defining what the vowel subsystem is, which must be composed of five vowels /i, e, a, o, u/; however, differently to what has been proposed by Ribeiro (2007) for whom mid-vowel alternation is a case of lexical diffusion, I show that a rule-based approach is more explanatory of the phenomena.

The status of unstressed lax-mid vowels in northern dialect of Brazilian Portuguese

“…The difference observed in Santana's (2016Santana's ( , 2018 studies regarding non-final postonic context and the ones that targeted pretonic syllables might either be due to prosodic reasons (reduction via laxing occurs pretonically, but not postonically), or to the methodology used by the studies (sociolinguistics interview vs. controlled experiment). Recall that the analysis targeting mid-vowel alternation in pretonic syllables all have a sociolinguistic character and, given the methodology that was adopted, the large number of tokens in the corpus not always correspond to a similar number of lexical types.…”

“…In an experimental study that analyzed mid-vowel alternation in non-final postonic syllables, Santana (2016Santana ( , 2018 proposed that lax-mid vowels are predictable and are produced when followed by a low-vowel in word-final position (eg. agríkɔla 'agricultural'; kamɛra 'camera'), i.e., lax-mid vowels are the result of harmony.…”

“…agríkɔla 'agricultural'; kamɛra 'camera'), i.e., lax-mid vowels are the result of harmony. Santana (2018) argues that the vowel subsystem non-final postonic context is /i, e, a, o, u/, or, in other words, that neutralization favors tense-mid vowels in non-final postonic syllables.…”