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Brazilian Portuguese vowel nasalization: secondary aspects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

John M. Lipski
John M. Lipski*
Affiliation:
Kean College of New Jersey
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Extract

The process of vowel nasalization in Portuguese has been a fascinating topic for investigation since the earliest days of Romance philology, and much energy has been expended to determine the origin, development, and contemporary manifestations of the Portuguese nasal vowels. Despite the large amount of scholarly activity devoted to the nasal vowels, however, surprisingly little attention had traditionally been paid to the manner in which they are recognized and produced by native speakers, other than a few traditional phonemic analyses. More recently, aspects of the Portuguese nasal vowel system have been investigated within the framework of generative phonology, with a view toward motivating a series of highly abstract structures underlying the forms of modern Portuguese; as a consequence, more attention was paid to the various details of the vowel nasalization process. The present paper is offered as an addition to the synchronic studies of Portuguese vowel nasalization, since the nasalization process presents several unique peculiarities which warrant a more detailed investigation. The object of this report is to bring up for discussion several aspects of vowel nasalization in Portuguese which have either been neglected in the literature, or which have received incomplete or conflicting descriptions. Other than an introduction to the general problem OI the Portuguese nasal vowels, no attempt will be made at reanalyzing areas which have been adequately covered in other studies, even when the opinions of the present writer differ radically from those of other investigators.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , Spring 1975 , pp. 59 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1975

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