Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T22:05:51.961Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Confronting the European Portuguese central vowel distinction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2016

Christopher Spahr*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto

Extract

Stressed syllables in European Portuguese contrast seven oral vowels, /i, u, e, o, ε, ɔ, a/, which are reduced to a simpler four-vowel set in unstressed syllables. Although /a/ never undergoes any phonological neutralization through vowel reduction, it has a raised allophone [ɐ] which occurs in several environments

Type
Squib/Notule
Copyright
© Canadian Linguistic Association/Association canadienne de linguistique 2016 

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.)

Footnotes

1

I would like to thank Joaquim Brandão de Carvalho, Elan Dresher, Ross Godfrey, Daniel Currie Hall, Keren Rice, and an anonymous CJL/RCL reviewer for comments on earlier versions of this squib. Work on this topic has also benefited from presentation to audiences at the 44th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages and at the University of Toronto. Responsibility for any remaining errors or shortcomings is entirely my own.

References

Barnes, Jonathan. 2006. Strength and weakness at the interface: Positional neutralization in phonetics and phonology. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Bucci, Jonathan. 2013. Voyelles longues virtuelles et réduction vocalique en coratin. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 58(3): 397414.Google Scholar
Carvalho, Joaquim Brandão de. 2004. Templatic morphology in the Portuguese verb. In Nouveaux départs en phonologie, eds. Meisenburg, Trudel and Selig, Maria, 1332. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.Google Scholar
Carvalho, Joaquim Brandão de. 2011. Contrastive hierarchies, privative features, and Portuguese vowels. Revista de estudos linguisticos da Universidade do Porto 6: 5166.Google Scholar
d'Andrade, Ernesto, and Viana, Maria do Céu. 1993. Que horas são ás (1)3 e 15? In Actas do VIII Encontro da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística, 5966. Lisboa: APL.Google Scholar
Frota, Sonia. 2000. Prosody and focus in European Portuguese. New York: Garland Publishing.Google Scholar
Gendrot, Cédric, and Adda-Decker, Martine. 2007. Impact and duration of vowel inventory size on formant values of oral vowels: An automated formant analysis from eight languages. International Conference of Phonetic Sciences 16: 14171420.Google Scholar
Hayes, Bruce. 1986. Inalterability in CV Phonology. Language 62(2): 321351.Google Scholar
Mateus, Maria Helena, and d'Andrade, Ernesto. 2000. The phonology of Portuguese. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Redenbarger, Wayne J. 1981. Articulator features and Portuguese vowel height. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Studies in Romance Languages.Google Scholar
Sá Nogueira, Rodrigo de. 1938. Elementos para um tratado de fonética portuguesa. Lisboa: Centro de Estudos Filológicos.Google Scholar