In Brazilian Portuguese, neoclassical elements (NCEs) may combine with both independent lexical words (e.g.,
One of the premises of Prosodic Phonology is that phonological processes apply in reference to prosodic domains, which are arranged into a scale or hierarchy (e.g.,
It has been proposed that certain structures do not have a fixed prosodic representation, but rather are assigned a particular representation depending on contextual constraints. For example, monosyllabic function words in English (such as
In this paper, we focus on the prosodic representation of neoclassical elements (NCEs), a pseudomorphological class that is crosslinguistically assumed to have multiple prosodic representations (see e.g.,
As in other European languages, NCEs in BP may or may not combine with elements that correspond to a lexical word on their own. For example, the NCE
Analyses that argue that NCE+Dep and NCE+Indep are prosodized differently thus assume that, in NCE+Indep, there is a PWd boundary between the NCE and the following element. In this case, PWd-boundary phenomena should be observed either at the right edge of the NCE or the left edge of the following element. In BP, one phenomenon that is consistently associated with the PWd is word-final vowel raising, in which underlying upper mid vowels (/e, o/) are reduced to high ([i, u]) in unstressed final position (
However, BP also has PWd-internal vowel reduction processes whose surface outcome is similar to word-final raising. These processes are vowel harmony (a pretonic upper mid vowel becomes high when there is a high vowel in the following syllable) and pretonic raising (a pretonic upper mid vowel raises to high without a following high vowel). If NCE+Dep corresponds to a simple PWd, the NCE-final vowel is in pretonic position and is therefore subject to PWd-internal raising processes. The question that arises is whether different prosodic representations can actually be proposed for NCE+Dep and NCE+Indep based on the application of vowel raising, given that the NCE-final vowel in both NCE+Indep and NCE+Dep may undergo reduction.
We argue that NCE+Dep and NCE+Indep are in effect prosodized differently in BP, and that what reveals these different forms of prosodization is not the presence or absence of vowel reduction, but rather the extent to which reduction is accepted and produced by speakers in structures with NCEs. Specifically, reduction in NCE+Indep (corresponding to word-final raising) should be more acceptable than reduction in NCE+Dep (corresponding to vowel harmony and pretonic raising). In addition, this difference should be reflected in production. That is because while word-final raising is assumed to be categorical in PWd-final position in standard BP (e.g.,
To examine this issue, we analyze native speakers’ judgements of vowel reduction in NCE-final position in both NCE+Dep and NCE+Indep, as well as production data. We show that speakers’ judgements and productions are consistent with having different forms of prosodization for NCE+Dep (as a single PWd) and NCE+Indep (as two PWds). Given the non-categoricity of speakers’ judgements, and the fact that reduction (at least PWd-internally) applies variably, our results suggest that prosodic differences may also be identified on the basis of gradient behavior—we employ the term
This paper is organized as follows. In section 2, we discuss vowel reduction processes in BP, the morphological behavior of NCEs, and the ways in which NCEs seem to be prosodically mapped in the language. Section 3 describes our experimental methods, and section 4 describes our results. We discuss the implications of our results for prosodic representation in section 5. Section 6 concludes.
BP has several vowel processes. Some of these processes ensue from the vowel inventory being reduced in unstressed positions, or from certain contrasts being irrelevant in these positions. In primarily stressed position, Standard BP has seven vowels: a, ɛ, e, i, ɔ, o, u. In pretonic position, the inventory is reduced to five segments: a, e, i, o, u (
(1)
a.
ˈb
‘beautiful’
b
‘beauty’
b.
ˈm
‘soft’
m
‘softness’
In unstressed final position, the inventory is reduced to three vowels: a, i, u (
Three vowel processes are of interest for this paper, since they have been used in the identification of prosodic domains in BP. These processes are vowel harmony, pretonic raising, and word-final raising (see e.g.,
We start by examining vowel harmony in BP. This process involves the raising of pretonic /e, o/ when there is a high vowel (/i, u/, usually stressed) in the following syllable (
(2) | a. | k |
‘owl’ |
b. | b |
‘beautiful.M’ | |
c. | m |
‘boy’ | |
d. | p |
‘wig’ |
(3) | a. | m |
‘mollusk’ |
b. | k |
‘mucus’ | |
c. | x |
‘diet’ | |
d. | p |
‘down, hair’ |
Rates of application for vowel harmony seem to be low to moderate. Studies focusing on various BP dialects obtained application rates between 20% and 40% (e.g.,
Pretonic raising applies when there is no following high vowel. Here, the affected vowels are also /e, o/. This type of raising seems to be mostly conditioned by lexical factors.
(4) | a. | b |
‘cheek’ |
b. | k |
‘elbow’ | |
c. | t |
‘scissors’ | |
d. | d |
‘slowly’ |
Although analyses of vowel harmony and pretonic raising are usually performed from a traditional variationist approach and do not include formant measurements, the vowels resulting from these processes are assumed to have the same quality as underlying pretonic /i, u/. Both vowel harmony and pretonic raising seem to be socially conditioned to a certain extent (e.g., they seem to be favored by speakers in older age groups;
Vowel raising in pretonic position (regardless of whether or not it corresponds to vowel harmony) is a PWd-internal phenomenon in BP, for the following reasons: (a) the affected vowels are part of the stem, and (b) prefix vowels are immune to the phenomenon (
In word-final raising, underlying /e, o/ are realized as [i, u] in unstressed final position, as illustrated in (5). Word-final raising is a categorical phenomenon in the vast majority of BP dialects (
(5) | a. | ʃaˈɾɔp |
‘syrup’ |
b. | paˈɾed |
‘wall’ | |
c. | kaˈbel |
‘hair’ | |
d. | vesˈtʃid |
‘dress’ |
As a boundary phenomenon, word-final raising allows the identification of PWds in composite structures. For example, in word-word compounds, each compound element whose stress is not final exhibits word-final raising. This suggests that each element in such compounds corresponds to an independent PWd (
(6)
a.
[siˈdad
city
[saˈtɛlit
satellite
‘satellite city’
b.
[ˈpɾont
immediate
[soˈkox
aid
‘emergency room’
The examples in (6) account for compounds formed by a combination of lexical words. BP also allows composite structures with stressed affixes whose phonological profile is similar to the profile of word-word compounds. Regarding word-final raising, it is assumed that compounds with stressed affixes exhibit the process in both of their elements (
(7)
a.
[ˈvis
vice
[pɾeziˈdent
president
‘vice president’
b.
[ˈasid
acid
[ˈziɲ
DIM
‘acidy’
As we will see below, structures of the type NCE+Indep seem to be equivalent to compounds with stressed prefixes in BP, at least from a morphological perspective. Although the morphological status of NCEs is open for debate, NCEs in BP may attach to fully-formed PWds, in the same way that stressed prefixes do. Thus, NCEs that attach to PWds seem to function as prefixes, in which case word-final raising should be observed in the NCE. In NCE+Dep structures, on the other hand, there is no lexical word boundary between the NCE and the element with which it combines, and neither the NCE nor the following element are prosodically independent. In this case, there is no context for word-final raising in the NCE. However, as primary stress does not fall on the NCE in NCE+Dep,
Previous findings seem to support the idea that prosodic structure can be identified on the basis of gradient application of phonological phenomena. In an analysis of clitic prosodization in a southern BP dialect in contact with Veneto, Guzzo & Garcia (
Guzzo & Garcia (
In the case of NCEs, potential differences in judgement and production of vowel reduction in NCE+Dep and NCE+Indep should not be due to the same phenomenon applying at distinct rates in two separate prosodic structures. Instead, distinct acceptability rates for raising in pretonic position and word-final raising should be consistent with prosodic differences implied by the application of these processes. Likewise, in production, NCE+Indep should exhibit more reduction (in terms of lower F1 and/or higher F2 values) than NCE+Dep, given the observations for the quality of pretonic and final vowels reported in previous studies (e.g.,
Neoclassical elements are important for the discussion of multiple prosodic mappings since, from a crosslinguistic perspective, they are able to form structures with elements from different categories, such as other NCEs (e.g.,
The morphological classification of NCEs has been the object of much debate. It is generally agreed upon that NCEs are learned forms that may have, to some extent, a different morphological behavior from native items (see e.g.,
The classification of NCEs as stems has been established on both semantic and morphological grounds: NCEs have specific meanings and may combine with the same affixes as native stems. In English, for example, the form
As previously mentioned, NCEs may also attach to lexical items that correspond to independent PWds. This is the case of a structure such as
Given the observation that NCEs may form structures with diverse items (e.g., other NCEs and independent lexical words), and that NCEs do not appear in isolation, they have also been classified as
As previously mentioned, Prosodic Phonology assumes that phonological phenomena apply in reference to specific prosodic domains (e.g.,
Partial prosodic hierarchy (adapted from
In effect, Peperkamp (
Both stem+word and word+word compounds behave identically in Standard Italian, in that they do not exhibit intervocalic
(8)
a.
[ˈɛwɾo]PWd
[ˈewɾo
[sotʃaˈlista]PWd
[sotʃaˈlista]PWd]PWd
‘euro socialist’ (stem+word compound)
b.
[ˈjɛɾi]PWd
[ˈjeri
[ˈseɾa]PWd
[ˈseɾa]PWd]PWd
‘last night’ (word+word compound)
The phonological behavior of stem+stem structures and stem+word compounds in Standard Italian suggests that the prosodic representation for NCEs is not fixed. While NCEs in stem+stem structures seem to be part of simple PWds, NCEs in stem+word compounds may correspond to independent PWds or form recursive PWd structures.
Different prosodic representations have also been proposed for NCEs in BP, although in this case these representations mostly rely on the type of item with which the NCE combines. Specifically, NCEs that form a structure with another morphosyntactically dependent item (i.e., an item that does not correspond to an independent lexical word) are arguably prosodized within simple PWds (see e.g.,
(9) | Representation for NCE+Dep |
On the other hand, NCEs that combine with independent lexical items (corresponding to PWds) have been proposed to be prosodized as independent PWds, yielding a recursive PWd with the adjacent lexical item (e.g.,
(10) | Representation for NCE+Indep |
NCEs in BP have either penultimate stress (e.g.,
Regarding the vowel reduction processes described in the previous subsection, some specific predictions can be made for NCE+Dep and NCE+Indep. In NCE+Indep, the PWd status of the NCE suggests that it is subject to word-final raising, like unstressed final vowels in lexical words corresponding to independent PWds. Thus, structures such as
(11) | a. | elɛtɾ |
‘household appliance’ |
b. | psik |
‘psycholinguistics’ |
In NCE+Dep, since there is no PWd boundary between the elements, word-final raising cannot target the NCE. However, in NCE+Dep, an NCE upper mid vowel may be affected by the processes that target pretonic vowels in BP, namely, vowel harmony and pretonic raising. The examples in (12) show how these processes might affect the NCE-final vowel /o/. If a high vowel follows the NCE-final vowel, there is context for vowel harmony, as observed in (12a). If no following high vowel is present, however, the NCE structure might still pattern with other lexical items in the language and exhibit pretonic raising, as observed in (12b).
(12) | a. | eletɾ |
‘electrocuted’ |
b. | psik |
‘psychology’ |
In summary, NCE+Dep and NCE+Indep exhibit important differences with respect to morphology and stress assignment, which suggests distinct prosodic representations. One question that arises is whether these distinct representations can also be identified based on vowel reduction processes, since the phonetic outcome of these processes is similar. In other words, since reduction might yield both [elɛtɾ
As previously discussed, word-final raising is assumed to be a categorical phenomenon in standard BP, while raising in pretonic position is conditioned by phonological and lexical factors. Thus, reduction should target NCE+Dep and NCE+Indep at different degrees: NCE+Indep should yield higher acceptance rates for reduction and should exhibit more reduction in production. Because reduction in NCE+Dep and NCE+Indep can be mapped to distinct phonological processes, these differences in acceptance and production should reflect the separate ways in which these structures are prosodized. To test if this is the case, we conducted two experiments, namely, a judgement task with auditory stimuli where participants rated NCE+Dep and NCE+Indep with and without vowel reduction in the NCE-final vowel, and a production task. We describe these experiments in the next section.
To investigate whether speakers’ preferences regarding vowel reduction in structures containing NCEs (NCE+Dep and NCE+Indep) reflect what is expected given the proposed prosodic representation for such structures (see (9) and (10)), we designed an auditory judgement task and a production task. In the judgement task, participants rated the naturalness of the pronunciation of isolated words. Two versions of the task were developed—we refer to them as Version A and Version B below. In the production task, a subset of participants in Version A of the judgement task produced NCE+Dep and NCE+Indep structures in carrier sentences.
In both Versions A (
Participants in Version A were all from the metropolitan area of Porto Alegre, in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. As previously mentioned, in the dialect of BP spoken in the area of Porto Alegre, word-final raising is assumed to be categorical (e.g.,
Participants in Version B were tested in Montréal, Canada, and had more diverse backgrounds—although most were from the southern and southeastern regions of Brazil, where vowel reduction processes apply in similar ways relative to Porto Alegre. To mitigate the possibility of dialectal influence on participants’ responses in the judgement task, all participants were told to assume that the words they were about to hear were pronounced by a journalist in a nationally televised news show. Our objective by telling participants this was twofold: (a) we wanted to make sure participants’ judgements were based on standard BP (in this case, the variety of BP that is disseminated by the media), and (b) given that NCEs are typically part of learned constructions and therefore may be restricted to specific communication contexts, we did not want participants to be surprised by the presence of structures with NCEs in the data, which could lead them to reject these items (regardless of how they were produced).
All participants had post-secondary education (either complete or under way). Although most participants reported some knowledge of a foreign language (especially English and French), all of them used BP on a regular basis, including for work or study purposes.
For the judgement task, participants rated stimuli that were recorded by a male native speaker of BP with training in phonetics. The stimuli were produced naturalistically, and they were subsequently checked in Praat (
The target items were NCEs in NCE+Dep (
Sample of target stimuli.
NCE+D |
NCE+I |
||
---|---|---|---|
[eletɾ |
‘electrocuted’ | [elɛtɾ |
‘household appliance’ |
[idɾ |
‘waterway’ | [idɾ |
‘water aerobics’ |
[psik |
‘psychology’ | [psik |
‘psycholinguistics’ |
As previously mentioned, Dep and Indep in NCE+Dep and NCE+Indep refer to whether or not the element with which the NCE combines is an independent lexical item (and PWd). Classifying some NCE structures as NCE+Dep or NCE+Indep may be challenging, as it is not always clear whether the element following the NCE corresponds to an independent lexical or phonological word. For instance, we classify the item
Two of the NCE+Dep structures have context for vowel harmony, namely,
Regarding the NCEs that were included in this study, two of them exhibit a lower mid vowel when produced in isolation. That is the case of
Fillers in the judgement task included nouns with no NCE in them (e.g.,
To ensure phonetic consistency across forms with and without reduction in both structures with NCEs, first and second formant values, as well as duration and f0, were extracted from the target vowel in the target stimuli. As already noted, reduction in BP word-final vowels has been associated with raising (i.e., lower F1 values;
Vowel formants in stimuli and associated standard error bars.
The same stimuli were used in the production task. Fillers (
We investigated speakers’ preferences regarding vowel reduction in NCEs by means of a judgement task designed in Praat (
Participants in Version A rated each item (with and without reduction) twice. To ensure that seeing each item twice did not affect participants’ responses, the experiment was shortened in Version B, and each item (with and without reduction) was rated once. Thus, participants in Version A rated a total of 404 items, while those in Version B rated 202 items. Version B is therefore a replication of Version A.
As we will see below, there was no difference between the two versions of the experiment, which suggests that neither the repetition of the stimuli nor the length of the experiment affected responses. Likewise, because both versions yielded the same results, we can rule out extralinguistic factors (such as place of origin or exposure to a second language) as potential biases in speakers’ preferences in our experiment. Participants in Version A took approximately 30 minutes on average to complete the experiment (they were allowed to take a five-minute break halfway through it). Participants in Version B took on average 15 minutes to complete the experiment (without any breaks). Participants were tested in a silent room.
For the production task, participants were asked to read short dialogues (of the type question+answer), which were presented using slides. Two types of dialogues were included, to test for the potential effect of focus on vowel quality (see discussion in
(13)
a.
O que
What
a
the
Maria
Mary
falou
said
durante
during
a
the
aula?
class?
‘What
b.
A
The
Maria
Mary
falou
said
X
X
durante
during
a
the
aula.
class.
‘Mary said X
(14)
a.
A
The
Maria
Mary
falou
said
X
X
depois
after
da
of the
aula?
class?
‘Did Mary say X after
b.
Não,
No,
a
the
Maria
Mary
falou
said
X
X
durante
during
a
the
aula,
class,
não
not
depois
after
da
of the
aula.
class.
‘No, Mary said X during
Participants were recorded in a silent room using a TASCAM DR-07MKII Portable Digital Recorder. Later, the target vowels in the sound files were manually segmented using Praat. F1 and F2 values as well as vowel duration were extracted using a script.
As previously mentioned, our goal is to examine whether vowel reduction patterns in structures with NCEs (NCE+Dep and NCE+Indep) are consistent with the prosodic representations that have been proposed for them—see (9) and (10). Therefore, we predict the following for the judgement task:
If NCE+Dep and NCE+Indep have distinct prosodic representations, there should be a difference in how they are rated for vowel reduction.
If NCE+Dep and NCE+Indep are indeed rated differently, reduction should be more natural in NCE+Indep than in NCE+Dep, since reduction in NCE+Indep corresponds to word-final raising, which is categorical in PWds in BP. Reduction in NCE+Dep should attain moderate ratings. Since raising in pretonic position is limited but possible (being constrained by both phonological and lexical factors), speakers should find it acceptable but not as natural as reduction in NCE+Indep. In addition, reduction in NCE+Dep should be less acceptable given the avoidance in production of raising in pretonic position in erudite forms.
Since NCEs are erudite items and the orthographic form of the stimuli was presented to the participants, non-reduction should be rated highly for both NCE+Dep and NCE+Indep. Given the possibility that participants may have seen some of the target NCE structures only in writing, they should accept productions that are faithful to their orthographic forms.
For our production task, we predict that NCE+Indep should yield more reduction of the target vowel relative to NCE+Dep. That is because the target vowel of the NCE is in final position in NCE+Indep and in pretonic position in NCE+Dep. The target vowel in NCE+Indep should therefore exhibit one or more of the signature cues for reduction in word-final position: (a) higher F2 values (centralization), (b) lower F1 values (raising), and/or (c) shorter duration. On the other hand, given that raising in pretonic position is lexically conditioned and associated with non-erudite words (
Besides being coded for NCE+Dep
The model we report below for the judgement data also conflates both versions (A and B) of the experiment. We do that because both groups of participants exhibit practically the same patterns in their responses, as we will see shortly. Crucially, a model including both vowel quality and experiment version as predictors has a fit that is not statistically better than a model that does not include these predictors—goodness of fit was assessed based on WAIC (
We analyze our judgement and production data using Bayesian hierarchical ordinal and linear regressions, respectively, with uninformed priors using Stan (
Because Bayesian inference estimates the probability of parameter values given the data,
Mean responses from Version A and Version B along 10-point scale and associated (bootstrapped) standard errors. Items with reduction are represented with “•”; dotted lines represent by-speaker means for items with reduction.
Distribution of responses along a 10-point scale, from “unnatural” (1) to “natural” (10) responses. Means are provided in boxes.
The model we report includes reduction and type of NCE structure as main effects, and an interaction between these predictors, as shown in
Posterior distributions of model estimates and associated 50% and 95% HDIs. Mean estimates and 95% HDIs values provided—all values are given in log-odds. Gray circles correspond to by-speaker random effects. Positive estimates indicate a concentration of responses on the higher end of the scale.
Before examining the estimates in our model, it is important to note that non-reduction and NCE+Dep are our reference levels. As a result, “Red” (i.e., reduction) in
The crucial posterior distribution in
In summary, participants’ responses are statistically affected by whether an NCE combines with a prosodically dependent or independent structure. Reduction in NCE+Indep forms (e.g.,
However, as the bars in
The total number of items included in the analysis of production data is 274.
F2 mean values and associated standard errors (
An identical model predicting F1 as a function of NCE structure was also run, and no statistically credible effect was found (Indep:
No statistically credible effect was found for duration, either (Indep:
As mentioned above, F2 differentiates NCE+Dep and NCE+Indep. To estimate the rates of reduction for both categories, we employed K-means clustering (
In summary, judgement and production data indicate that reduction in NCE+Indep structures is not only more acceptable, but also produced more frequently relative to NCE+Dep structures. Regarding production, reduction in NCE+Indep is manifested through centralization of the NCE-final vowel. In the next section, we further discuss whether these judgement and production patterns are consistent with the proposed representations for NCE+ Dep and NCE+Indep, and the ways in which prosodic representation may accommodate non-categoricity.
In our judgement task, reduction in NCE+Indep has statistically higher ratings than reduction in NCE+Dep. In our production task, the NCE-final vowel exhibits more centralization in NCE+Indep than in NCE+Dep. These results are consistent with (a) the idea that NCE+Indep and NCE+Dep have distinct prosodic representations, and (b) the idea that word-final raising is more pervasive in the BP grammar than raising in pretonic position. In other words, reduction is better and more likely in NCEs that are targeted by word-final raising (i.e., in NCE+Indep, where the NCE is a PWd) than in NCEs that are targeted by raising in pretonic position (i.e, in NCE+Dep, where the NCE is not an independent PWd).
The distribution of participants’ judgement responses for reduction in both
Our results thus suggest that NCE+Dep and NCE+Indep are in effect targeted by different phonological phenomena. If speakers had the same prosodic representation for both NCE+Dep and NCE+Indep, they should accept or reject reduction in both structures with similar ratings. In the judgement task, what reveals that speakers have distinct representations for NCE structures is not whether or not they accept reduction in both, but rather how acceptable reduction is in these structures. The findings from the judgement task and the production task provide empirical evidence that expands on initial proposals on prosodic differences between NCE structures in BP (section 2.2) based on morphological factors and stress assignment patterns.
As discussed above, other work in Prosodic Phonology has argued that distinct application rates are evidence for different prosodic representations (
The results of our judgement task, as well as the results for clitics in Guzzo & Garcia (
As shown in (15), the prosodic mapping of NCE+Dep and NCE+Indep is invariable, and reduction rates (in acceptance and production) are predicted on the basis of the resulting prosodic structure. Following from this, reduction in the NCE-final vowel in NCE+Dep is not evidence for the alternative mapping of this structure as NCE+Indep, since some degree of reduction is anticipated in PWd-internal position.
(15) | a. | [psik |
|
b. | [[psik |
This contrasts with the proposal for stem+word and word+word compounds in Standard Italian by Peperkamp (
While we assume that multiple prosodic mappings may be available for certain structures, we argue that this does not apply to NCEs in BP. The case of compounds in Italian has an important difference relative to the case of NCEs in BP. In Italian, lower mid vowels are only found in primarily stressed syllables. Therefore, raising to upper mid indicates that the vowel has lost its primary stress and thus behaves as a pretonic vowel. Since lower mid vowels and and upper mid vowels alternate in the first element of Italian compounds, it is reasonable to assume that the alternation stems from prosodic differences.
On the other hand, the application of reduction processes in NCEs in BP does not involve the target vowel losing its stress. The mapping of NCE+Dep as a simple PWd provides the structure with context for PWd-internal processes such as pretonic raising and vowel harmony, which are variable in the language (with modest application rates in production, as discussed in 2.1). The mapping of NCE+Indep into two PWds creates context for the NCE-final vowel to undergo word-final processes, such as vowel raising. The type of variation exhibited by NCE-final vowels can thus be captured by positing a specific prosodic representation for each NCE structure.
It should be noted that vowel behavior following from prosodic differences in NCEs is also consistent with proposals about reduction within the word domain in BP. Several previous studies have argued that reduction in word-final position is more extreme than reduction in pretonic position, given the smaller vowel inventory in word-final position relative to pretonic position and the quality differences observed for vowels in these two positions (e.g.,
Although vowel raising in word-final position is categorical in most BP dialects (including standard BP), it was not categorically accepted by speakers in our judgement task. In addition, non-reduction in NCE+Indep obtained a mean acceptance rate higher than the mean acceptance rate for reduction, and equivalent to the acceptance rate of non-reduction in NCE+Dep (see
It is possible that, in NCE+Indep, the non-categorical acceptance rate for reduction and the underuse of phonetic cues to signal reduction are due to the status of the PWd corresponding to the NCE in the recursive PWd. In accounts that assume recursivity within prosodic domains, recursive and non-recursive levels may exhibit distinct phonological behavior. Furthermore, the lower level of a given prosodic domain (i.e., the minimal level) may behave differently from the higher level of the same domain (i.e., the maximal level) (e.g.,
In a framework where levels of a single domain are labeled as
To examine this possibility, a closer look at the proposed representations for composite structures in BP is needed. NCE+Indep structures pattern prosodically with stressed prefix+word compounds in BP, which have also been argued to correspond to recursive PWds (e.g.,
(16) |
(17) |
In NCE+Indep, the stress shift observed for stressed prefix+word compounds also seems possible, yielding patterns such as
It is important to note, however, that both stressed prefix+word compounds and word+ word compounds are assumed to exhibit word-final raising (
No previous studies on vowel quality in BP seem to include composite structures like those in (16) and (17) in their stimuli, which prevents us from making further comparisons with our own data. Since our primary goal was to examine whether the proposed prosodic differences between NCE+Dep and NCE+Indep hold, we did not include word+word compounds nor stressed prefix+word compounds in our experiment. Further research is thus needed to evaluate whether the patterns of word-final raising in composite structures in BP are in effect consistent with the representations in (16) and (17).
In this article, we examined vowel reduction in two types of structures with NCEs in BP, namely, NCE+Dep (
We proposed that these potential prosodic differences should be revealed not by the application or non-application of these vowel processes, but rather by how frequently they apply and the extent to which they are accepted by speakers. Given the lexical conditioning of raising in pretonic position, it should be less frequent (both in judgements and in production) than word-final raising. For the structures under analysis, reduction in NCE+Dep should therefore be less frequent than reduction in NCE+Indep. In our judgement task, reduction was in effect judged as more acceptable in NCE+Indep. In production, NCE+Indep exhibited more vowel centralization. These patterns are consistent with the proposed prosodic representations for NCE structures in BP. Following from this, we argued that speakers’ behavior (in judgements and production) reflect patterns that are predicted by prosodic structure. In our proposal, prosodic structure predicts not only the application or non-application of phonological processes, but also the relative rates at which these processes apply. This proposal may potentially be expanded to the analysis of other (variable) phenomena that seem to involve prosodic conditioning, such as /t, d/ flapping and /l/ velarization in English, and word-final consonant devoicing in German.
Target stimuli (orthographic form).
NCE+D |
NCE+I |
|||
---|---|---|---|---|
S |
G |
S |
G |
|
agro-nomia | ‘agronomy’ | agro-negócio | ‘agribusiness’ | |
eletro-cutado | ‘electrocuted’ | agro-pecuária | ‘farming’ | |
hidro-cefalia | ‘hydrocephaly’ | agro-tóxico | ‘pesticide’ | |
hidro-grafia | ‘hydrography’ | eletro-doméstico | ‘household appliance’ | |
hidro-pônico | ‘hydroponic’ | eletro-magnetismo | ‘electromagnetism’ | |
hidro-via | ‘waterway’ | eletro-terapia | ‘electrotherapy’ | |
neuro-logia | ‘neurology’ | hidro-ginástica | ‘water aerobics’ | |
orto-dontia | ‘orthodontics’ | hidro-massagem | ‘hot tub’ | |
orto-grafia | ‘orthography’ | hidro-terapia | ‘hydrotherapy’ | |
orto-pedista | ‘orthopedist’ | neuro-cientista | ‘neuroscientist’ | |
proto-zoário | ‘protozoan’ | neuro-cirurgião | ‘neurosurgeon’ | |
psico-délico | ‘psychedelic’ | orto-molecular | ‘orthomolecular’ | |
psico-grafia | ‘psychography’ | proto-língua | ‘protolanguage’ | |
psico-logia | ‘psychology’ | psico-linguística | ‘psycholinguistics’ | |
psico-pata | ‘psychopath’ | psico-social | ‘psychosocial’ | |
psico-trópico | ‘psychotropic’ | psico-terapia | ‘psychotherapy’ | |
Fillers (orthographic form). Vowels with/without reduction are underlined.
agrad |
‘thankful’ | m |
‘backpack’ |
am |
‘threat’ | m |
‘mustard’ |
ant |
‘anticipated’ | p |
‘order’ |
ap |
‘retirement’ | p |
‘blow with stone’ |
ass |
‘to whistle’ | p |
‘hung’ |
b |
‘drink (n.)’ | p |
‘hairstyle’ |
b |
‘cheek’ | p[ |
‘tire’ |
b |
‘cookie’ | p |
‘small’ |
borb |
‘butterfly’ | p |
‘percussion’ |
b |
‘kindness’ | p |
‘danger’ |
carr |
‘charger’ | p |
‘powerful’ |
cidad |
‘city.DIM’ | p |
‘policing’ |
c |
‘comment’ | pres |
‘preserved’ |
c |
‘food’ | pr |
‘searched’ |
d |
‘highlight’ | pr |
‘progress’ |
d |
‘slowly’ | rep |
‘to repeat’ |
el |
‘elevator’ | r |
‘reproduction’ |
enf |
‘to hang’ | r |
‘to snore’ |
g |
‘generation’ | suav |
‘smoothly’ |
g |
‘governor’ | tem |
‘fearful’ |
h |
‘hospital’ | t |
‘tested’ |
mart |
‘blow with hammer’ | t |
‘crest’ |
m |
‘fearsome’ | t |
‘supporter’ |
m |
‘boy’ | ||
Judgement task: Model estimates and associated errors, 95% credible intervals, R̂, and effective sample sizes (ESS).
E |
E |
R̂ | B |
T |
|||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Intercept[1] | 0.50 | 1.00 | 4845 | 8683 | |||
Intercept[2] | 0.49 | 1.00 | 4768 | 8663 | |||
Intercept[3] | 0.49 | 1.00 | 4741 | 8223 | |||
Intercept[4] | 0.48 | 1.00 | 4743 | 8516 | |||
Intercept[5] | 0.48 | 1.00 | 4717 | 8361 | |||
Intercept[6] | 0.48 | 1.00 | 4701 | 8128 | |||
Intercept[7] | 0.48 | 1.00 | 4665 | 7987 | |||
Intercept[8] | 0.47 | 1.00 | 4628 | 8075 | |||
Intercept[9] | 0.47 | 1.00 | 4606 | 8459 | |||
Indep | 0.43 | 0.59 | 1.00 | 5557 | 10006 | ||
Red | 0.57 | 1.00 | 5449 | 9427 | |||
Indep:Red | 1.52 | 0.59 | 0.35 | 2.68 | 1.00 | 4600 | 8735 |
Production task (F2): Model estimates and associated errors, 95% credible intervals, R̂, and effective sample sizes (ESS).
E |
E |
R̂ | B |
T |
|||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Intercept | 1147.28 | 90.85 | 968.51 | 1325.53 | 1.00 | 1854 | 2157 |
Indep | 132.42 | 63.80 | 9.12 | 255.24 | 1.00 | 1923 | 2461 |
Focus | 32.35 | 32.64 | 95.34 | 1.00 | 7137 | 2751 | |
BP = Brazilian Portuguese, CG = composite group, DIM = diminutive, CI = credible interval, ESS = effective sample size, HDI = highest density interval, NCE = neoclassical element, PPh = phonological phrase, PWd = phonological word, R̂ = Gelman-Rubin statistic
Some BP dialects exhibit variable lowering in pretonic position, triggered by a following lower mid or low vowel (e.g., [bɔlɔ́ta] ‘ball’;
Oliveira (
As the examples in (4c), (4d), (5b) and (5d) illustrate, /t, d/ are realized as [tʃ, dʒ] before a high front vowel or glide in Standard BP.
In some NCE+Dep structures, stress does fall on the NCE-final vowel, which surfaces as [ɔ] (e.g.,
Guzzo & Garcia (
NCEs may be instantiated on their own if they derive from clipping. This is the case, for example, of
The SPE (
Some accounts also include the mora (
But not all elements classified as
We were unable to control for lexical frequency of the NCE structures in this experiment. Given the erudite status of NCE constructions in the language, they are rare in frequency corpora whose data are sourced from informal communication contexts (e.g.,
WAIC is a fully Bayesian method of assessing the fit of a Bayesian model. The method consists of taking averages of the log-likelihood over the posterior distribution—cf. DIC (
We have also plotted the data without the stimuli containing
We also examined participants’ judgements for the fillers, based on whether or not reduction should be accepted in them. In items where reduction is expected to be natural, participants’ mean rating for reduction was 7.7, while in items where it is expected to be unnatural, the mean rating was 3.3. Participants in both versions behaved similarly.
Due to technical issues, one of the participants did not complete the experiment.
For the two models reported here,
Word+word compounds behave differently from phrases with respect to vowel elision, which supports their prosodization in distinct domains.
While approaches to prosodic structure that assume recursion typically do not assume the existence of a domain between the PWd and the PPh, the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. For more on prosodic accounts that exclude recursion (at least in lower prosodic domains), see Vogel (
We would like to thank three anonymous reviewers and the Associate Editor, Juliet Stanton, for their helpful comments and suggestions. We would also like to thank Heather Goad for invaluable discussion on prosodic representation, and Matthew Siegel for research assistantship.
The authors have no competing interests to declare.