A EPÊNTESE NO PORTUGUÊS BRASILEIRO (L2), EM SEGMENTOS PLOSIVOS EM CODAS MEDIAIS, POR FALANTES NATIVOS DO ESPANHOL COLOMBIANO (L1): UMA ANÁLISE VIA TEORIA DA OTIMIDADE ESTOCÁSTICA E GRAMÁTICA HARMÔNICA

Abstract

This study aims to describe and analyze, according to the frameworks of Harmonic Grammar HG (LEGENDRE, MIYATA & SMOLENSKY, 1990; SMOLENSKY & LEGENDRE, 2006) and Stochastic Optimality Theory OT, (BOERSMA & HAYES, 2001), the production, by Colombian Learners of Brazilian Portuguese (BP), of stop segments in word-mid codas, liable for the production of epenthetical segments. This investigation was motivated by the possibility of occurrence of stop codas in the learners‟ L1, but not in the L2, as Brazilian Portuguese tends to avoid this syllabic structure. In order to build the corpus, an instrument composed of Portuguese and Spanish cognate words was proposed, so that vehicle phrases could be recorded in AUDACITY 1.3.5 (ANSI) software. Four Colombian students, who remained in Brazil for a period of six months, in an academic mobility program in the city of Pelotas-RS, were chosen to take part in the investigation. In the selection of the participants, extralinguistic factors such as sex, age and scholarity were homogenized. The data were submitted to an acoustic analysis using PRAAT (5.1.12), developed by Paul Boersma and David Weenick. We confirmed the hypothesis that even in cognate words, there is a different treatment to plosive in coda position in both analyzed languages, depending on the language system which is being used by the speaker. Such fact was collected, according to the Harmonic Grammar and Stochastic Optimality Theory, through a hierarchy of universal constraints