The effect of frontness and height in the identification of open-mid vowels and close-mid vowels in Brazilian Portuguese by Spanish speakers

• Autor(a) principal: Feiden, Juliana Andrade
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Outros Autores: Alves, Ubiratã Kickhöfel, Finger, Ingrid
• 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/14715
• topic: Frontness; height; Identification of open-mid vowels and close mid-vowels; L2 Brazilian Portuguese.; Anterioridade; altura; Identificação das vogais médias altas e médias baixas; Português como L2.; Psicolinguística

Speakers of L1 Spanish have difficulty discriminating the open and close-mid vowels [e], [E], [o], [O] in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). The goal of this paper is to verify the effects of frontness and height in the perception of these vowels. A test of vowel identification was given to 16 speakers of Argentine Spanish, aged between 16 e 18 years, using minimal pairs in BP. Results show that, in both front and back vowels, participants had higher scores in items containing close-mid vowels if compared with items containing open-mid vowels In relation to the frontness effect, participants also demonstrated more difficulty in identifying open-mid vowels than close-mid vowels. The results confirm the difficulty of Spanish speakers in identifying mid vowels of BP, as well as provide evidence that these learners are forming new L2 phonetic-phonological categories, despite the difficulty of defining aspects that characterize such acoustic-articulatory categories.