Vowel Lenition and Fortition in Brazilian Portuguese
LETRAS DE HOJE LETRAS DE HOJE LETRAS DE HOJE LETRAS DE HOJE LETRAS DE HOJE LETRAS DE HOJE LETRAS DE HOJE
Vowel lenition and fortition in Brazilian Portuguese
Enfraquecimento e fortalecimento de vogal em português brasileiro
Andrew Nevins University College London1
Abstract: In this paper I deal with vowel reduction in Brazilian Portuguese and other languages, illustrating the principles (1) that segmental complexity and positional strength are closely aligned in phonological structure, and (2) that syntagmatic distinctness (e.g. between strong and weak positions, and between halves of a diphthong) can induce segmental lenition and fortition. The empirical phenomena covered include asymmetries in pre-tonic vs. post-tonic vowel reduction, differences in the realization of unstressed mid vowels in Northeastern vs. Southeastern Brazilian Portuguese, and preferred diphthongs in the language. Keywords: Vowel reduction; Diphthong formation; Plural formation; Vowel coalescence; Element Theory Resumo: Neste artigo, analisamos redução vocálica em português e outras línguas. Ilustramos os princípios de (1) que complexidade segmental e força de posição estão intimamente alinhadas na estrutura fonológica e (2) que a distinção sintagmática (e.g. entre posições fortes e fracas e entre partes de ditongos) pode induzir enfraquecimento e fortalecimento segmental. Os fenômenos empíricos estudados incluem (a) assimetria na redução vocálica em posição tônica vs. pré-tônica, (b) diferenças na realização de vogais médias não-acentuadas em dialetos do nordeste e sudeste do português brasileiro, (c) ditongos preferidos em português. Palavras-chaves: Redução vocálica; Formação de ditongos; Formação de plurais; Coalescência vocálica; Teoria de Elementos
1
1 Positional Asymmetries in questions. The organizing phenomena for the pursuit Vowel Reduction of these questions is vowel lenition, a term I will use to emphasize its parallelism with consonantal lenition, The aim of this paper is to illustrate the potential a domain in which some of these principles are already for success in applying certain ideas about phonological more familiar. structure to the pattern of stressed and unstressed vowels The first principle whose applicability will be explored in Brazilian Portuguese. The application of the theories is the Government Phonology/Element Theory claim that under discussion to this language has not been attempted segmental complexity and positional strength are closely before, and it is therefore my goal to illustrate the aligned in phonological structure: that segmental lenition potential usefulness of these models to existing puzzles happens in weak positions and segmental fortition happens in Brazilian Portuguese phonology, while acknowledging in strong positions, where strong and weak are defined in from the outset that it is by no means a complete account, absolute (e.g. word-initial) and relative (e.g. head of a and is intended more to raise new ways of framing foot) terms (see Harris 1994 for a general introduction). certain questions than to provide answers to older (and For consonantal fortition and lenition phenomena (such as arguably less explanatorily satisfactory) versions of such the distribution of English t-allophones), it is indisputable that the distribution of segmental strength must – and 1 For comments and suggestions on prior presentations of the ideas in this indeed, seems to want to – refer to foot structure. But the paper, I thank Elisa Battisti, Philip Backley, Michael Becker, Leda Bisol, potential relevance of feet to vowel lenition – i.e. vowel Gisela Colischonn, Gean Damulakis, John Harris, Emilio Pagotto, Filomena Sandalo, Luiz Carlos Schwindt, Shanti Ulfsbjornnin, and Leo Wetzels, reduction – has received comparatively less attention, to though none of them should be held responsible for any potential errors. which we turn.
Os conteúdos deste periódico de acesso aberto estão licenciados sob os termos da Licença Letras de Hoje, Porto Alegre, v. 47, n. 3, p. 228-233, jul./set. 2012 Creative Commons Atribuição-UsoNãoComercial-ObrasDerivadasProibidas 3.0 Unported. Vowel Lenition and Fortition in Brazilian Portuguese 229
Let’s begin with the well-known facts about revealing in understanding (1). Moreover, we can now Brazilian Portuguese: it has 7 oral vowels and 5 nasal cover cases in which vowel reduction actually does not vowels, and in unstressed syllables vowel reduction may apply at all, namely ‘angry’ or ‘deliberate’ speech, as occur, although its application is conditioned by a variety shown in (3d): of factors, as we shall discuss. The round vowels, when they reduce, go to [u], whereas the palatal vowels, when (3) Footing and reduction in moleque ‘urchin’ they reduce, go to [i]. The central low vowel varies in a. (mos)(les.kiw): Exhaustive footing; first syllable its unstressed realization, which we will represent here heads a degenerate foot. as schwa [ə]. The literature that supports the claims in b. mu(les.kiw): Main trochee footed. First syllable the previous three sentences is so massive I cannot even reduces (due to (2)). begin to cite it here without committing dozens of errors of c. *mu(les)(kes): Main stress in degenerate foot. comission, and in light of it, what I have described above Impermissible structure. cannot be said to constitute anything remotely news- d. (mos)(les)(kes): All syllables their own prosodic worthy. words; all degenerate feet. On to the first of more nuanced matters: saying “unstressed” is not specific enough: post-tonic reduction In (3a), footing the first pretonic syllable is possible, is always more obligatory than pre-tonic reduction. Thus, while in (3b), leaving it unfooted is also possible. a three-syllable word with penultimate stress will never However, as (3c) shows, footing the post-tonic syllable on show reduction in the first syllable while not doing so in its own, in the same prosodic word as the main stress, is the last syllable: impermissible. The asymmetry is now stated not in terms of linear order but in terms of foot structure: trochees must (1) Possible application of reduction to moleque ‘urchin’ be formed, whereas syllables outside the main foot may a. [moleki] be optionally assigned structure. When they are footed, b. [muleki] they will constitute a head, and hence be protected from c. *[muleke] reduction. When unfooted, they are subject to reduction like any other weak syllable. These facts are by no means unique to Brazilian This formulation thus forces us to seek constraints on Portuguese; Karavasilev (2010) documented the same possible foot structures for trisyllabic words, rather than trend in Bulgarian, in which reduction in a nonce word simply call vowel reduction something that is sometimes like opódo can result in [opódu] or [upódu], but never optional, sometimes obligatory. On the current view – [upódo]. Why should this be the case? One possible which is in no doubt need of further refinement – vowel redescription of the facts is to say that vowel reduction reduction is always obligatory for weak syllables. The is obligatory in post-tonic syllables, but optional in idea is that what varies is the foot structure and how it pre-tonic syllables, but this leaves the asymmetry is assigned, and we can now begin to ask what happens unexplained. What can account for the asymmetry, with longer words. then? Clearly, linear order alone will not be revealing Indeed it is also known that asymmetries in reduction to derive the left-right difference, whereas appealing to possibilities occur for tetrasyllabic words with penultimate another level of structure may help: the foot. Assuming stress. Consider the fact that the antepretonic vowel can trochaic feet for penultimate-stressed nouns, words never reduce to the exclusion of the immediately pretonic like moleque have a foot in which the strong position vowel. contains [(le)] and the weak position contains [(ki)]. Vowel reduction thus accentuates the contrast between the (4) Possible application of reduction to mexerica ‘tange- strong and weak half of a foot. What about the pre-tonic rine’ syllable? In fact, it needn’t be footed, and apparently a. [mixirica] nothing in BP requires exhaustive footing outside of the b. [mexirica] main stress of a prosodic word. Consider now the following c. *[mixerica] statement: Again, the asymmetry should be sought not in terms (2) Vowel reduction is obligatory everywhere in BP that is of terms like ‘antepretonic ‘ versus ‘immediately pretonic’ not the strong position of a foot. but in terms of foot structure. Consider the footing of two pretonic syllables: they can be assigned to a trochaic foot, The statement in (2), while no doubt too strong in or to no foot at all. Forming a degenerate foot out of only its formulation to cover every aspect of the language, is one of them, however, will not be an option:
Letras de Hoje, Porto Alegre, v. 47, n. 3, p. 228-233, jul./set. 2012 230 Nevins, A.
(5) Possible foot structure in mexerica ‘tangerine’ tonic vowel, and form the combinations |A|+|U| = [o]
a. No footing of pretonic syllables: mi.xi.(ris.caw) and |A|+|I| = [e]. In other words, the mid-vowels [e,o] b. Footing: (mes.xiw).(ris.caw) are not ‘primitive’ but rather derived. This aspect of c. Impossible footing: *mi.(xes).(ris.caw) Element Theory echoes a long grammatical tradition which views the fact that the most common 3-vowel If left unfooted, both syllables will reduce. If footed, system is [i,u,a] (in terms of typology, Dispersion Theory the strong half will be protected while the weak half and Quantal Theory), by elevating these three vowels to will reduce. Constraints on foot structure will prohibit a the status of atomic primes, the combinations of which degenerate pretonic foot that fails to include the preceding can form composite vowels, so that the mid-vowels [e,o] syllable in (5c), and hence this pattern of reduction will are more complex than the corner vowels in terms of be impossible. In short, [me.xi.ri.ca] shows an alternating their acoustic signatures and in terms of their formal trochaic pattern of strong odd-numbered syllables, and this markedness. (Note that the actual phonetic values of is why the asymmetry exists in reduction possibilities. some of these elements and their combinations may vary Naturally, I have restricted the discussion to in sparse vowel spaces, e.g. as [I,,E]). underived words; morphologically complex words such As a direct result of building complexity into the as policial ‘police officer’ with a secondary stress on the number of primes that compose a segment, reduction initial syllable, may show reduction, but it is derived processes in positions that support less complexity (i.e. from polícia, which shows pretonic reduction in the unfooted or in the weak half of a binary foot) target these base. Such cyclic effects are the bread and butter of both composite structures, and lenition in fact involves the derivational and output-output based approaches designed removal of element structure. To take an example from to account for the retention of segmental alternations from consonant systems, English t is represented in Element derivational bases that would be otherwise unexpected Theory as a combination of |R,/,H| (representing place, under a surface syllabification or foot structure, and fall manner, and voicing). In weak, foot-medial position, outside the scope of our study of the purely phonological North American English reduces this set to simply |R|, factors influencing vowel reduction. yielding the process known as flapping, whereas UK English reduces it to |/|, yielding glottalling. The same 2 Element Theory and Vowel Realizations variation in what is deleted/removed from a segment that finds itself in a prosodically weak position can be found In order for the claim that positional strength and in the contrast between the fate of unstressed [o] in the segmental complexity are correlated to go through, we Slavic languages Bulgarian and Russian, where the former must develop a model of Lusophone vowel systems in reduces |A,U| to |U| alone, whereas the latter reduces it which complexity can be clearly ‘read off’ the structure. to |A| alone. (Brazilian Portuguese post-tonic reduction Naturally, binary features such as [±round], [±high] cannot may be essentially characterized as removal of |A| from be very easily translated into measures of comparative all vowels, yielding the only remaining possibilities as complexity of vowel representations (the valiant efforts |I|, |U|, or | |, the latter of which is interpreted as schwa). of SPE Chapter 9 notwithstanding), in part because vowel Element Theory thus provides a direct way of encoding systems depend so much on the inventory of contrasts to the observation that paradigmatic and syntagmatic aspects which each vowel must be compared and contrastively of vowel inventory reduction may be modeled in terms of represented. Consider, however, the application of Element the combination of primes. Of even greater utility, however, Theory (Backley 2011) to Lusophone vowel systems, by is its notion of headedness, which expresses the fact that comparing Barlavento and Sotavento varieties of Cape given a two-element combination, one of the elements Verdean Creole (Macedo 1989): exhibits a greater say on the realization of the resulting composite. Distinctions in headedness are empirically (6) Vowel Coalescence in Cape Verdean Creole: necessary for languages (such as, say, English) that Sotavento Barlavento distinguish [E] and [æ]: while both are composed of |A,I|, gatu got ‘cat’ one needs to express their difference formally, and this branku bronk ‘white’ is accomplished by designating |A| as the head (indicated sidadi sided ‘city’ by underlining) in |A,I| [æ], whereas |I| is the head in |A,I| pai pe ‘father’ (where linear order means nothing), which represents [E]. So what of a language with a contrast between The data illustrate a kind of apocope followed by tense and lax mid vowels, such as the [e,E] and [o,O] of coalescence: the final high vowels of Sotavento (and 7-vowel languages, such as Brazilian Portuguese? I claim etymologically found in Portuguese) coalesce into the that Element Theory underdetermines the answer to this
Letras de Hoje, Porto Alegre, v. 47, n. 3, p. 228-233, jul./set. 2012 Vowel Lenition and Fortition in Brazilian Portuguese 231 question, and that this ambiguity is a feature, not a bug, as the representation of nasal vowels, which involve the it enables one to express idiolectal and dialectal variation. element |L| in Backley (2011). Nasal [ã], therefore, would In particular, let us assume that a headed combination be composed of |L,A|. of two elements is more complex than an unheaded Recall that Southeastern dialects accomplish combination: neutralization of the [e/E] contrast by removing the headed version, namely |I,A|, and thereby show a (7) A headed element-theoretic combination |α,β| is more dispreference for complex expressions with headed complex (and thus less easily licensed in a prosodically |A|. This makes the prediction that these same dialects weak position) than an unheaded version of the will show comparatively more reduction of nasal [ã], combination |α,β| producing it instead as a much more centralized [)] than their Northeastern brethren (which is reported to be an Returning to the expression of the stressed inventories independently attested observation about the South/North of 7-vowel systems, we may in principle represent them dialectal split), as the |A|-removed version of the vowel as either (8a) or (8b) (where stressed [i,u,a] are also would be represented as |L| alone (i.e. a nasal schwa). headed): By contrast, Northeastern dialects accomplish neutralization of the [e/ ] contrast by removing the headed (8a) |I| [i] (8b) |I| [i] E |U| [u] |U| [u] version, namely |I,A|, and thereby show a dispreference |I,A| [e] |I,A| [e] for complex expressions with headed |I|. In terms of |U,A| [o] |U,A| [o] complex expressions involving nasality and |I|, the nasal |I,A| [E] |I,A| [E] diphthong [ẽj] (found in words such as ontem ‘yesterday’) |U,A| [O] |U,A| [O] should undergo comparatively more vowel reduction, and |A| [a] |A| [a] indeed it seems to be the case that these dialects reduce nasal mid-vowel diphthongs to [i] (producing forms such The only point of variation between (8a) and (8b) is as [onti]) more than their Southern kin. whether the tense-mid series is represented as headed and In sum, by encoding the notion of ‘default’ in a more the lax-mid as unheaded, as in the former, or whether the principled manner as ‘the non-headed version of a complex lax-mid is represented as headed and the tense-mid as vocalic expression’, we can begin to pursue falsifiable unheaded, as in the latter, but I claim that this constitutes correlations as to whether the same dispreferred headed precisely the difference between ‘Northeastern’ (8a) and vowels in |I,A| (Northeast [e]) vs. |I,A| (Southeast [E]) ‘Southeastern’ (8b) BP (labels I put in scare quotes to indi- correlate with reduction of the headed element in other cate their status as idealizations over large dialectal areas). combinations, such as |L,A| and |L,A,I| respectively. In particular, it is often noted that Northeastern Moreover, the encoding of headedness as a formal speakers reduce the contrast between tense and lax property also makes predictions about the phonetic pretonic mid vowels to the lax version of the pair, thereby distribution within the vowel space of these mid vowels: pronouncing [tɛlɛvisão] ‘television’ with lax vowels, as Kenstowicz (2010) shows for Italian dialects, when while Southeastern speakers pronounce this same word [E] is preferred (by hypothesis, system (8a)), “the closed as [televisão], with tense pretonic mid vowels. Most mid vowels are very near to the high vowels, while the accounts of these phenomena have simply recast the facts open mid vowels are relatively well separated from the by saying that lax vowels are the ‘default’ in the Northeast, single low vowel”; in other words, when [E] is preferred, while tense vowels are the default in the Southeast. With it is because [e] is more |I|-like – and thus closer to |I| in headedness (and its analytic underdetermination in acoustic space – exactly as represented in (8a). 7-vowel systems) as a formal aspect of the representation, Further acoustic measurements within Brazilian however, we can encode default status in slightly more Portuguese dialects of the [tElEvisão] vs. [televisão] nuanced terms, according to (7): in a weak position (e.g. varieties can only sharpen and refine our characterization pretonically), the less complex, and thereby non-headed of the formal and correlational properties of stressed version of the pair will be favored, and this in turn is why and unstressed vowels in both the oral and nasal sub- [E,O] are preferred in (8a), corresponding to Northeastern systems. dialects, while these same vowels are headed, and hence dispreferred, in Southeastern dialects. 3 Preferred Diphthongs and Syntagmatic The status of the systems in (8a) vs. (8b) in enacting Fortition reduction of specific kinds of headed expressions in fact lead to particular correlational predictions within these The Element-Theoretic formulation of the primitives dialects. In particular, up until now we have not discussed |I,U,A|, while extremely effective in characterizing the
Letras de Hoje, Porto Alegre, v. 47, n. 3, p. 228-233, jul./set. 2012 232 Nevins, A. reductions in complexity that take place when more (9) |I| complex vowels undergo vowel reduction, nonetheless is in its present form missing out on an important, recurrent crosslinguistic asymmetry: that between |I| and |U|. |U| Donegan 1978 observes that both |I| and |U| characterize extremes in the ‘color’ (e.g. F2) dimension, as opposed to |A|, which epitomizes an extreme in the sonority dimension, but that nonetheless, |I| exerts more of an upward ‘pull’ on mid-vowels than |U| does. Indeed, Bisol [e] [o] 1989 notes that variable pretonic reduction in Brazilian |A| Portuguese shows higher rates of application when it is [e] raising to [i] than [o] raising to [u], and characterizes The result of umlaut in German [aw] would be this in terms of the lower F1 (and thereby more extreme expected [ew], but in fact this diphthong (also found in articulatory target) of the front vs the back high vowel words like neu) is pronounced [oj]. The complete change (see also Fails and Clegg 1992 on BP). In what follows, in the pronunciation of this diphthong is the result of I wish to pursue the notion that |I| is a more extreme (and shuffling the elements so that the offglide and the non- hence, more contrastive) target than |U| in its relation head component of the nucleus have switched, so that to fortition, a process that Donegan 1978 relates to the higher/more extreme |I| is placed in the other half, thereby syntagmatic differentiation between the two halves of a heightening syntagmatic dispersion, as show in (10). diphthong. If in fact |I| is higher and hence farther from |A| than |U| is, then one might expect the diphthong [aj] to be (10) X X X X crosslinguistically preferred to [aw], as the syntagmatic |A| |U| |A| |I| disperson in the former is greater. And in fact, Kubozono |I| ➙ |U| (2001) shows that such an asymmetry holds in Japanese, where [aw] is much less prevalent than [aj] (and more Of the four possible diphthongs [oj], [ow], [ej], susceptible to dialectal monophthongization). The same [ew], the highest degree of diphthongal disperson occurs asymmetry holds in English, in which the Great Vowel with [oj]. It is important to note that even [ej] is not an Shift bore more exceptions with [aw]-diphthongizaton ideally dispersed diphthong, and for this reason European than [aj]-diphthongization, and even in the synchronic Portuguese lowers its nucleus, pronouncing it as [j]. grammar, in which [aw]-diphthongs are severely restricted Similarly, in East London English, the word coin retains in terms of which coda consonants they can co-occur with: its diphthong, while name shows lowering of [ej] to while rimes with a variety of places such as ripe, like, [aj]. This ‘inexplicable’ lowering of the diphthong [ej] bribe, rife, hive, time exist, words with the same onset is driven by the same syntagmatic dispersion operative and coda but a different diphthongal rime are unattested throughout other areas of Lusophone grammars, and we (and arguably unattestable: *roup, louk, broub, souf, houv, turn to a more involved one now. towm do not have much of a chance; [aw] is only allowed I contend that plural formation with C-final stems, before coronals). particularly in those that end in orthographic
Letras de Hoje, Porto Alegre, v. 47, n. 3, p. 228-233, jul./set. 2012 Vowel Lenition and Fortition in Brazilian Portuguese 233 fact, the majority of /w/-final singulars in BP surface illustrations of new answers to previously observed with the ending [js] in the plural, although syllable count asymmetries that had not received these kinds of solutions. is a relevant factor (see Becker, Clemens and Nevins, The key ideas have been illustrating the relevance of 2011). foot structure for understanding asymmetries in vowel Given the statement that [js] is preferred to [ws], reduction, the relevance of ambiguous head status in all else being equal, we now must inspect the role of complex mid vowels for understanding ‘default’ status, and diphthongal dispersion, and in particular, the contribution the relevance of syntagmatic dispersion for understanding of the preceding vowel. In fact, Becker, Clemens and plural formation and diphthongal distribution. Like any Nevins 2011 find in a nonce word study that one of such initial attempt, it awaits extensive further empirical the major determining factors of whether an [w]-final confirmation, ideally from domains such as productivity singular (including words with orthographic final , experiments like wug-testing, and correlations of diverse such as museu ‘museum’, chapéu ‘hat’, degrau ‘step’) and seemingly unrelated phonetic and sociolinguistic will choose [js] in the plural depends on the height of the measurements that have not been compared in the same vowel: the lax and lower vowels [E,O,a] favor the [-js] studies from within and across dialects of Lusophone plural, whereas the higher vowels favor the [-ws] plural – a varieties. fact attested even in ‘erroneous plurals’ such as chap[E]is, degrais (which never happens to mus[e]u) – a trend References verified in purely auditory presentation of nonce words in which none of orthography, frequency, or diachrony BACKLEY, Phillip. An introduction to Element Theory. were at issue. Edinburgh, University Press, 2011. Why, then, do nouns like mus[e]u reject a plural BECKER, Michael; CLEMENS, Lauren Eby; NEVINS such as mus[e]is? Because [e] and [j] are very close in Andrew. A richer model is not always more accurate: the case of French and Portuguese plurals. Manuscript, available at: both color and sonority – too close, in fact, and hence
Letras de Hoje, Porto Alegre, v. 47, n. 3, p. 228-233, jul./set. 2012