Monossílabos CV do português: leves e degenerados? Sonoridade vocálica e iteração de elementos na atribuição de peso e na preservação da minimalidade em português

Abstract

It has been argued whether Portuguese phonology comprehends a Minimality Condition imposed to all lexical entries of the language. The existence of a non-neglectable number of “light” CV monosyllables in this language has been interpreted as a clue of the irrelevance of such phonological constraint in this language. In this paper, we argue in favour of viewing Portuguese phonology as sensitive to minimality: with a very few exceptions only (basically corresponding to clitics), all words in Portuguese obey a mora-based minimality constraint which establishes that any word be at least bisyllabic or, if monosyllabic, a heavy syllable. Syllable weight is then assumed also as an important prosodic property of Portuguese. In addition to the traditional criterion to accept monosyllables as heavy (i. e., rhyme branching), a weight parametrization is postulated accepting that sonority and element iteration (within an Element Theory-based approach of the vowels’ segmental structure) do count also for syllable weight. Therefore, Portuguese monosyllables – either through rhyme branching or the inherent weight of vowels with high degrees of sonority or iterated elements – might be seen as compatible with the weight-sensitive minimality constraints that are functional in this language.

Keywords

• Minimality Condition
• Monossylables
• Syllable Weight
• Sonority