a percepção das entoações nas frases imperativas negativas do inglês por falantes de língua portuguesa - uma análise à luz das teorias prosódica e entoacional

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the perception that Portuguese speakers, from the southern region of Brazil, have from different meanings conveyed by the intonation, arising from different prominences, of English negative imperative sentences. Concerning the prosodic characterization, there is the analysis of Phonological (ıs) and Intonation (Is) Phrases based on the theoretical framework of Prosodic Phonology of Nespor and Vogel (1986); it is proposed the analysis of the organization of Phonological Phrases when constituting English imperative sentences as Intonational Phrases. As for the intonation characterization, it is proposed to analyze the Fundamental Frequency values (F0) of the negative imperative sentences under the Intonational Phonology theory, from Ladd (1996, 2008). The research methodology included the collection of a corpus consisted of perception data of English negative imperative sentences, obtained from 30 learners of English, between 18-30 years old, from Pelotas/RS and its region, and from three proficiency levels of English: Basic, Intermediate and Advanced. To certify the participants’ level, all of them took the Oxford Placement Test (Allan, 2004). Perception data were collected through a “judgment test”, in which stimulus were recorded by a native English speaker. The results were statistically analyzed in the SPSS software version 17.0, and the stimuli were subjected to acoustic analysis with the aid of the Praat software. The results showed great difficulty of English learners in identifying the meanings conveyed by negative imperative sentences, especially those of basic level, considering the prosodic level of the language, which was explained by the intonation of each type of sentence in accordance with the principles of Phonology Intonational as well as the organization of Phonological Phrases that make up the Intonation Phrase, in line with the precepts of Prosodic Theory.