Percepção e produção de vogais médias do espanhol por falantes do português brasileiro

Abstract

This study aims at investigating the perception and production of the Spanish mid vowels [e] and [o] by native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, all undergraduate students in Letras/Spanish as a Foreign Language of both on-site and distance learning modalities. According to Câmara Jr. (2007 [1970]), there are seven BP oral vowels (/i, e, ɛ, a, ɔ, o, u/) in stressed position. As regards Spanish, Martinez Celdrán (1995, 2007) states that there are only five oral vowels (/i, e, a, o, u/), with no mid-low vowel that makes phonological distinction. However, phonetically, there are mid-low vowel productions with lower or higher degrees of aperture (NAVARRO TOMÁS, 2004 [1918]). Considering that in Spanish there are no mid-low vowels (/ɛ/, /ɔ/), differently from the BP vowel set, this difference may be considered one of the reasons why BP speakers pronounce the Spanish mid vowels [e] and [o] as the mid-low BP [ɛ] and [ɔ] (BAZZAN, 2005; MIGNONI, 1999), originating foreign accent (FLEGE, 1987; LONG, 1990). In order to contribute to the understanding of the perception and production of the Spanish mid vowels [e] and [o] by BP speakers, 40 undergraduate students from the cities of Pelotas, Rio Grande, Jaguarão and Santana do Livramento, from the State of Rio Grande do Sul, performed a perception test and a production test. There was also a control group formed by eight BP speakers, from the city of Rio Grande, and eight Spanish speakers, from the city of Montevideo, Uruguay, all undergraduate students whose native language (L1) productions were analyzed in order to obtain reference vowel duration and formant (F1 and F2) values in both BP and Spanish, respectively. To test foreign language (L2) perception and production, two instruments were administered: an identification test, to test vowel perception; and a sentence-reading task, to test vowel production. Production data were analyzed in the software Praat and reveal that (1) the vowel [e] is produced by Brazilians with mean F1 values similar to those produced by native speakers of Spanish; and (2) dispersion in the production of the back vowel [o] by native speakers of Spanish is considerable, resulting in F1 values in Spanish/L2 higher than in BP/L1. As regards perception of the target vowels, both L1 and L2 speakers of Spanish had similar results of correct identification. No statistically significant differences were found between teaching modalities (distance vs. on-site), or region (direct vs. indirect geographical border) in both perception and production results