Fonologização na diacronia : do latim ao português moderno

Abstract

This paper aims to present a research which focuses on the description and analysis of phonologization in the evolution of the Latin consonant system to Portuguese, from material collected through literature review on manuals and historical grammars. The phonologization as the center of a diachronic study is justified by its key role in the establishment of the history of languages, since it is responsible for changing the phonological inventories, to fill gaps in the existent system, either by inserting new segments or even creating a whole class of nonexistent segments. Despite of being an essential process in the structuring of language inventories, there are few researches that explore its characteristic and function. The explanation of phonological processes involved and the active distinctive features in the phenomenon is guided by the assumptions of the Autosegmental theory (CLEMENTS and HUME, 1995), specifically based on the Model of Feature-Based Phonological Principles (CLEMENTS, 2009). Data were organized to explain the origin of new Portuguese phonemes, the kind of active process (sonorization, fricativization, consonantization, palatalization), the feature role in the change process, and the possible evolutionary steps that led to the implementation of new phonemes in the Portuguese inventory, when comparing to the Latin consonant system. Data analysis showed that the performance of Economy Feature Principle and the Robustness Principle, according to the model of Clements (2009), is an attested trend in diachronic language. In addition, it can be basically identified two movements that guide the evolution of the analyzed consonant system: one that aims at the system symmetry, favoring the filling of gaps in the phonological inventory by the expansion of contrastive use of features relevant to the grammar, and another that militates in favor of a system expansion by creating new classes of segments. From the two movements, new oppositions are resulted, and both are established through actions of non-contrastive features in the source system, as well as through features that, already relevant, shall be placed in new co-occurrences; in both cases, there is the role of universal phonological principles, influencing features’ choice and function. As a result of the action of universal principles underlying phonologization, the analysis did not only show the structure of the Latin system which motivated this phenomenon in the diachronic Portuguese. The results unveiled that the function of features are able to make explicit the two forces that underlie the phonologization process in the evolution of the Portuguese consonant system: the incomplete structure of the system that gave rise to it, and the universal principles that represent trends in the constitution of World languages inventories.