Temporal organization of vowel clusters in Brazilian Portuguese and the relationship between Phonetics and Phonology

• Autor(a) principal: Silva, Adelaide Hercília Pescatori
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Letras de Hoje (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://revistaseletronicas.pucrs.br/ojs/index.php/fale/article/view/14891
• topic: Vowel clusters; Acoustic analysis; Duration; Temporal organization; encontros vocálicos; análise acústica; duração; organização temporal; Teoria e Análise Linguística

Phonologists have been discussing for a long time the difference between hiatus and diphthongs in Brazilian Portuguese, but until now there are no phonetic analyses for these vowel clusters in BP. Nevertheless, such analyses are crucial in a scenario, triggered by Laboratory Phonology, where phonetic data play a special role to phonological analysis: Incorporating phonetic data can yield more adequate and parsimonious phonological explanations for facts of the speech chain. Departing from a brief overview on phonological analyses on vocalic clusters in BP, this paper presents a preliminary acoustic description for diphthongs and hiatus in BP. The description points to a distinct temporal organization among the acoustic events that constitute the clusters. The findings, then, suggest timing is crucial for the organization of the speech chain. This argument leads to the proposition of a phonological analysis that incorporates phonetic data, based on the temporal organization of speech units.