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The variable deletion of unstressed vowels in Faialense Portuguese

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 June 2009

David James Silva
David James Silva
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Arlington
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Abstract

To verify anecdotal claims regarding the nature of unstressed vowel deletion in Azorean (European) Portuguese, conversational data from a native speaker of the island of Faial have been analyzed to determine the segmental and prosodic contexts favoring elision. Results of a quantitative analysis indicate that unstressed [u] and schwa are the most likely vowels to be deleted; moreover, deletion is highly favored when the unstressed vowel occurs in word-final position at the end of an utterance. Factors such as rhythmic preservation, syllable structure, and functional load are discounted in the analysis, suggesting that vowel deletion is essentially a word-based variable process in the language.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , October 1997 , pp. 295 - 308
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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