Ditongos no Português e no Espanhol: análise sincrônica e diacrônica

Abstract

This study aims at investigating the behavior of diphthongs in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and in Spanish from the Prata River region, under the synchronic and diachronic approaches. To develop the diachronic research, it was used bibliographic material, in which was taken the corpus consisted of data related to the historical path of diphthongs from Latin to BP and Spanish from the Prata River region. To discuss the functioning of diphthongs in the current dimension of the two languages, it was constituted two corpora taken from television programs (two from Brazil and two from Uruguay, being one from newscast and the other from an interview program for each country). The data relating to synchronous functioning have been heard, phonetically transcribed, and eventually analyzed. The results indicate the specificity of each language systems related to the behavior of vowel sequences, with prevalence of decreasing diphthongs in BP and rising diphthongs in Spanish from the Prata River region, which can be explained by the diachrony. It was also identified, as a characteristic of the BP system, the variation between the vowel sequence [ej] and the vowel [e] before rhotic consonant. The research was supported by the Stochastic Optimality Theory (Boersma & Hayes, 2001)