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Vowel harmony: A variable rule in Brazilian Portuguese

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Leda Bisol
Leda Bisol
Affiliation:
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
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Abstract

Brazilian Portuguese has a vowel harmony rule which consists of the optional raising of the pretonic e and o vowels to i and u, respectively, if there is a high vowel in the following syllable. This is an old rule, the origin of which can be traced back to the Latin of the 4th century a.d. Because the rule is subject to multiple conditioning by both linguistic and social factors, it can be treated as a variable rule.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , July 1989 , pp. 185 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

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