The Retroflex [ɽ] in Data of the Monitored Style of the ALIB: An Analasys of Reading in Seven Cities in the State of São Paulo

Abstract

The rhotics, due to their different realizations, have been the object of study in many sociolinguistic and dialectological studies (Aguilera (2008), Botassini (2009), Callou, Moraes e Leite (2013), Almeida e Kailer (2016), Maciel (2018), Maciel e Kailer (2019, among others). Nevertheless, there seems to be a lot to be investigated regarding the use of /R/ variants. For this reason, this article analyses, in the light of the theoretical assumptions of Variationist Sociolinguistics (Labov, 2008 [1972]), the realization of /R/ in internal syllabic coda in data from the Linguistic Atlas of Brazil (ALiB). These data were collected from readings carried out by speakers from seven cities in the state of São Paulo1 and analyzed with the objective of verifying whether the retroflex variant [ɽ] is productive in formal contexts of language use. After analysis, we found that: a) young people are using the retroflex in a very significant way, which indicates the vitality of the variant; b) in cities in the state inlands, the use of [ɽ] is more frequent than in the capital; and c) the low vowel [a] and the open middle [ɛ] are the most favorable to the implementation of the variant under study.

Keywords

• sociolinguistics
• rhotics
• retroflex