Vowel Raising Without a Trigger: pretonic mid-vowels in the Northwest of São Paulo State

Abstract

This paper investigates the variable phonetic and phonological phenomenon of vowel raising of pretonic mid-vowels in medial context in the variety spoken in the Northwest of São Paulo State, e.g. m[i]lhor (‘better’/‘best’) and c[u]lega (‘mate’). This work focuses on vowel raising without a trigger, i.e., that cannot be explained by vowel harmony, triggered by a high vowel in the following syllable, e.g. m[i]nino (‘boy’) and g[u]rdu ra (‘fat’). Therefore, this research advances in relation to the studies of Silveira (2008), Carmo (2009, 2013, 2014, 2018) and Carmo and Tenani (2013) concerning vowel raising of medial pretonic mid-vowels in the same variety. Following the theoretical and methodological framework of Linguistic Variation and Change Theory (LABOV, 2008), 38 interviews with spontaneous speech samples taken from the IBORUNA database, a result of ALIP project (GONÇALVES, 2007, IBILCE/ UNESP – FAPESP 03/08058), were analyzed. The quantitative analysis of the data, through the utilization of the statistical package Goldvarb X, demonstrates that vowel raising is not very productive in this variety, with rates of 5% and 10.3% for /e/ and /o/, respectively. In general, it occurs in paradigms of certain lexical items, which corroborates the hypothesis of lexical diffusion in order to explain the process (BISOL, 2009).

Keywords

• phonetic and phonological variation
• pretonic mid-vowels
• vowel raising without a trigger