Gragoatá (Jun 2015)
A MULTIREPRESENTATIONAL APPROACH TO EPENTHESIS IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE
Abstract
This paper presents a study on epenthesis in Brasilian Portuguese and its interaction with word stress. We focus on the gradient properties of epenthesis both in lexical, structural and phonetic terms. The main contribution of the present study is to offer an innovative approach to epenthesis, based on Laboratory Phonology and Multirepresentational Models. Data collected experimentally suggest that epenthesis and accentuation of epenthetic vowels are gradually implemented. The data analyzed show that stressed epenthetic vowels present duration patterns that lie in between the durations of regular vowels and unstressed epenthetic vowels, in a gradual way. We suggest that the results presented offer support to a multidimentional perspective to sound representations and that the linguistic system is organized through web relationships.
