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Variation and Change in the Rhotics of Brazilian Portuguese

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Variation and Change in the Rhotics of Brazilian Portuguese Variation and Change in the Rhotics of Brazilian Portuguese Iiris Rennicke Department of Modern Languages, University of Helsinki, Finland in cotutelle with Programa de Pós-Graduação em Estudos Linguísticos, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil Doctoral dissertation To be publicly discussed, by due permission of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki in lecture room 13 (Main building), on the 18th of November, 2015 at 12 o’clock. c Iiris Rennicke 2015 Typeset in LATEX ISBN 978-951-51-1688-8 (paperback) ISBN 978-951-51-1689-5 (PDF) Helsinki 2015 Printed by Kopio Niini Oy Abstract The main objective of this dissertation is to describe the current state and class- hood of rhotics in the Minas Gerais variety of Brazilian Portuguese (BP), explore the factors behind sound change, and discuss the direction of change. The hy- pothesis is that changes in various subsystems of the language contribute to a general sound change trajectory, which takes place mostly through articulatory reduction and retiming in frequently used words and constructions (as predicted by Exemplar Models). Language is seen as a Complex Adaptive System that consists of several subsystems, all of which undergo change and can contribute simultaneously to gradual changes in the overall system. Semi-structured interviews and a sentence completion task with 14 speakers from southwestern Minas Gerais yielded a total of 7,765 contexts for rhotics. The rhotics of BP were found to include trills, taps, fricatives, approximants and aspirated approximants in alveolar, palatal, retroflex/bunched, uvular, and glottal places of articulation. Deletions also form a considerable part of the data. BP rhotics have followed two diverging lenition trajectories: one anterior (alveo-palatal) and one posterior (uvular and glottal). Both trajectories can ultimately lead to deletion. Factors that promote lenition include post-tonic position, adjacency to the voiceless fricative [s] and/or the high vowels [i I u U], and coda position which involves more lenited r-variants and deletion than any other context. Once sound change begins to generalize in these attractors, it can also spread to other r-contexts. BP rhotics are best modelled as a network of language-specific family rela- tionships, in which chains of articulatory reductions and retimings establish di- achronic connections between synchronically distant variants. As a class, rhotics are featurally, articulatorily, and phonetically unspecified, and phonetic overlap between contexts makes the contrast between r-variants incomplete. For this reason, the phonological representation of rhotics consists of fuzzy positional categories that encompass a variety of phonetic forms and that are constantly updated through language use. i ii Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the help of many people and institutions. First I would like to thank all members of the teaching staff in Spanish and Portuguese Philology at the University of Helsinki, including Timo Riiho, Professor of Iberian Romance languages and adviser of this dissertation. These people taught me how to think, speak and write in two foreign languages close to my heart. Extra thanks also go out to Johanna Ratia, secretary of Iberian Romance languages, who has helped me with various bureaucratic issues during the last few years. I would also like to thank everyone at the Postgraduate Student Services of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki and in the PosLin administration at UFMG who made my cotutelle degree possible. You would not be reading this dissertation had I not crossed paths with Thaïs Cristófaro Silva, Professor at the Faculdade de Letras of Universi- dade Federal de Minas Gerais, during my exchange year in Brazil. She later became the second adviser of my dissertation and introduced me to the linguistic theories that guided my whole research project. She has my deepest gratitude for receiving me with open arms, guiding my research, and keeping my spirits up during the process. She is a lady of countless scientific catch phrases who has taught me independence and perseverance. Data collection was made possible by Professor Raquel Fontes Martins and her students at Universidade Federal de Lavras. Thank you for making me feel welcome and giving me such excellent and representative material! I would also like to thank Distinguished Professor Emerita Joan Bybee (University of New Mexico) and Professor James M. Scobbie (Queen Mar- garet University) for acting as pre-examiners of this dissertation and for their valuable comments and suggestions, which I have incorporated into iii my work to the best of my abilities. I also extend my gratitude to James M. Scobbie for accepting to act as opponent in my doctoral defence. I would like to thank the following institutions for providing research and travel grants during my PhD: University of Helsinki Funds, Alfred Kordelinin yleinen edistys- ja sivistysrahasto, Emil Aaltosen säätiö, Eino Jutikkalan rahasto, Langnet, CoCoLaC, and the Centre of Linguistics of the University of Porto. Langnet, the Finnish doctoral programme of lin- guistics, provided not only financial means to pursue my degree, but also excellent courses and seminars. I would like to thank the coordinators of the Language Variation and Change subgroup, Riho Grünthal and Juhani Klemola, for organizing seminars where I received insightful comments on my work. I am especially grateful to my Langnet colleagues Linda Bäck- man, Sonja Dahlgren, Lotta Jalava, Max Wahlström and Ludvig Forsman for their comments, advice and company. Several people have contributed to my journey towards a doctoral de- fence. I would like to thank Professor João Veloso for first introducing me to the wonderful world of Portuguese phonetics and phonology during my exchange year at the Faculdade de Letras of the University of Porto. After his mind-blowing phonetics course I was even more convinced that articu- lation is at the core of human communication. He also commented early drafts of my dissertation and gave recommendations for my applications for research and travel grants. Through João I met Pedro Martins to whom I am grateful for our collaboration in an article on the rhotics of European Portuguese (which turned out to be one of the crucial “missing links” in the story of Brazilian r’s). During my Master’s degree, Professor Jânia Martins Ramos at UFMG encouraged me to investigate the sociolinguistic aspects of coda rhotics in Minas Gerais. I thank her for the dedication she showed when I was writing my MA thesis whose topic, spiced up with phonology and phonetics, later became also my PhD topic. Living between two countries means having two sets of colleagues, friends and family. The problem with this is always feeling the absence of one or the other. My studies and personal life in Brazil would not have been the same without my colleagues at the Phonology Lab: Nívia Oliveira, Victor Hugo Medina Soares, Maria Cantoni, Iara Rosa, Cecília Toledo, Fred Baumgratz, Ingrid Castro, Jamila Rodrigues, and by exten- sion, Gustavo Augusto Mendonça, Marco Fonseca and Ricardo Napoleão. iv I also thank Meghie Rodrigues for our philosophically hilarious conversa- tions, and my band mates Flávio Lacerda, Guilherme Lacerda and Lucas Mileib for all the moments of musical fun and distraction. My stays in Finland, on the other hand, are always made lighter by Petra Gustafsson and Diego Barros. I cannot thank you enough for the Bed & Breakfast and comfort you offer me unconditionally, and for helping me organise my doctoral defence. I would also like to thank Hanna Lantto, Elina Liikanen and Tuomo Hiippala for their company and advice in our shared office, and Tuomo also for the LATEX support. In addition to my office mates, lunch and coffee breaks during stressful work days in Metsätalo were al- ways made more fun by Riikka Ala-Risku, Zsuzsanna Renkó-Michelsen, Hanna Leikas and the Brazilian Embassy teachers Bianca Benini, Patrícia Carvalho and Helena Noto, who were my ray of Brazilian sunshine even in the middle of the coldest Finnish winter. Obrigada to my Brazilian family (Cleina, Ebenezer, Luciana and Liliane) for your constant help and support. Kiitos to my family: Sirpa, Raimo, Joonas, Minna, Emma, Seija, Erkki and Kalevi. Ilman teidän tukeanne en olisi ikinä päässyt näin pitkälle. Finally, it is hard to find the right words to express my gratitude to Rodrigo for being an endless source of patience, encouragement and technical assistance throughout these five years. Seus olhos meu clarão, me guiam dentro da escuridão. Seus pés me abrem o caminho, eu sigo e nunca me sinto só. Belo Horizonte, 1st of November 2015 Iiris Rennicke v vi Eu prefiro ser Essa metamorfose ambulante Do que ter aquela velha opinião Formada sobre tudo – Raul Seixas viii Contents List of Figures xv List of Tables xxi 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Research topic . 1 1.2 Why study rhotics? . 2 1.3 Experimental approach to phonology . 4 1.4 Hypothesis and research questions . 6 1.5 Dissertation structure . 7 2 Rhotics as a Research Topic 9 2.1 Rhotics as a class . 9 2.2 Lenition in rhotics . 17 2.2.1 Phonological approaches to lenition . 17 2.2.2 Phonetic approaches to lenition . 21 2.2.3 Is retraction weakening? . 23 2.2.4 A lenition trajectory for rhotics . 25 2.3 The Articulation and Acoustics of Rhotics . 29 2.3.1 Trills . 30 2.3.2 Taps and flaps . 31 2.3.3 Fricatives . 32 2.3.4 Approximants . 34 2.3.5 Vocalic variants . 38 2.3.5.1 Rhotic vowels . 39 2.3.5.2 Non-rhotic vocalic variants . 39 ix 2.4 Rhotics in Portuguese . 40 2.4.1 Sound changes in the rhotics of European and Brazil- ian Portuguese . 40 2.4.1.1 From trills to taps . 41 2.4.1.2 From alveolar to uvular .
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