Repositório RCAAP

This paper argues for a unifying view of vowel harmony and vowel reduction in Brazilian Portuguese on the basis of Dispersion Theory (FLEMMING, 2004).

This study focuses on mid vowels in non-final posttonic position in the popular speech of Rio de Janeiro State. The analysis, which is performed in two stages, aims to determine the social and linguistic factors that guide the raising of these vowels. The first step is developed according to the assumptions of variationist sociolinguistics and based on a sample of spontaneous speech representative of the North and Northwest regions. The second relies on data selected from phonetic maps of two atlases that cover sixteen communities in different areas of the State. The analysis results show that, in spontaneous speech, the raising of the two mid vowels is almost categorical, while, in monitored speech, decreases the frequency of the back vowel raising and predominates the mid variant of the front vowel.

This article aims to investigate the unstressed [ãw] diphthong reduction in the verbal morphology of Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Three verb tenses from the first conjugation were considered: 1) present tense: cantam (they sing); 2) past perfect tense: cantaram (they sang) and 3) past imperfect tense: cantavam (they used to sing). Results indicate that PB has an ongoing mechanism of change which aims to reorganize the verbal paradigm to a reduced number of verbal endings (Duarte, 1996). Such mechanism is implemented through constraints and allowances in grammatical organization. Thus, the [ãw] diphthong reduction in the verbal morphology operates in BP Phonology through segmental reduction in prosodically weak positions. More frequent verbs are affected at higher levels than less frequent ones due to the phonetic motivation of the phenomenon in unstressed position, and regularizing the verbal paradigm by analogical leveling.

This work presents the nasal vowels in Latundê, a Brazilian indigenous language, family Northen Nambikwara, that is spoken in Rondônia state, by homonymous group. In Latundê there are six nasal vowels, three of which are nasal/creacky voice. The occurrence of these vowels is restricted to the position of the accent. In the un stressed syllable the nasal contrast is neutralized. Another aspect involving the nasal vowels is related to the presence of nasal coda following the nasal vowel. However, the opposition in the same linguistic context and the existence of some cases of nasal vowels without a nasal consonant in the coda position shows the phonological status of nasal vowels in Latundê.

We present a comprehensive bibliography on nasal vowels in Portuguese. Articles, books and book chapters, theses and dissertations were included, as well as abstracts featured in Brazil and in Portugal. Abstracts presented in local or regional meetings were excluded. There are 103 references on the subject, published between 1903 and 2012. To the best of our knowledge, they were never presented in a single publication. Taken together, we can see that the two trends approaching the question are kept much apart, phonetics and phonology. In phonological works, the debate on the mono- or biphonemic nature of nasal vowels, which occupied the structuralist authors, is replaced by a reinterpretation of the proposed system with no nasal vowels in several subsequent theoretical accounts. The phonetic approach is characterized by the use, in addition to acoustic analysis, of increasingly sophisticated techniques for describing the phenomenon: magnetic resonance imaging, speech synthesis, nasometry, and optical fiberscope.

In this work, based on Optimality Theory assumptions (PRINCE and SMOLENSKY, 1993; McCARTHY and PRINCE, 1993), we analyze how the stress assignment in Brazilian Portuguese occurs when words with high vocoids preceded or succeeded by a vowel are involved, in words like azeite and idioma. It is used here the term “vocoid” to describe an underlying segment that can be realized as a vowel or a glide. It was found that, in general, the high vocoid in the sequences under analysis only receives stress if it is stressed in the input. If the accent is not present in the input or if another segment receives stress in the input, there will be a preference for the realization of high vocoid as glide, since this allows achieving simultaneous satisfaction of constraints on the syllabification and stress assignment.

In this paper, we investigate to which extent social variables act on the medial vowel raising phenomenon in the Portuguese variety spoken in São José do Rio Preto, a city in the countryside of São Paulo State. Based on the theoretical-methodological model of Sociolinguistics Variacionist, we analyse speech samples from this city, the Iboruna database. The results show that the vowel raising applies: (i) for both men and women; (ii) in all age groups and, (iii) in all levels of formal education. Taking into consideration the results of analysis of social and linguistic variables selected by the program GoldVarb, we find evidences that vowel raising phenomenon is not sensitive to social pressures in the speech community studied, which allows us to affirm that it is not a phenomenon socially stigmatized and the variation in its implementation is more strongly subject to linguistic variables.

This experiment, through the acoustic analysis of vowels, investigated the vowel system used by Capixabas. As part of this investigation, the vowel system from Vitória was compared to the results obtained in a former experiment in which the vowel systems from five other capital cities were investigated. The gender comparison was made to complement the description of the Capixaba vowel system. The group of speakers was composed of four men and four women, who had already graduated or were in college. All the speakers were born in Vitória and belonged to the age range from 20 to 40. Sentences carrying the key words were recorded randomly and each vowel was recorded 10 times. Words carrying the vowels to be investigated provided a similar phonetic context. The results obtained through this experiment will be able to support other experiments that concern Brazilian Portuguese.

Researches on the acquisition of Portuguese vowels have been developed based on different theoretical approaches. The works, which are, however, numerically not very significant when compared to those who investigate the acquisition of the consonantal system, converge in pointing to the early emergence of /a, i, u/, followed by the medium high and medium low vowels. The discussions usually turn to the emergence of low middle vowels and did not cast even a glance on the acquisition of variable rules of Portuguese. The role of the co-articulatory effects on the distribution of vowels produced by children has also been set aside. This work, based on data from five children in the process of acquisition of Brazilian Portuguese language, with ages between 1:0 and 3:0, aims to explain the occurrence of vowel harmony in their productions, seeking to relate vowel harmony to the phonology acquisition process.

This article presents the construction process of a word/pseudoword writing task for adults, based on the approach of cognitive neuropsychology. The construction process involved six steps: 1) selection of psycholinguistic criteria, 2) selection of the stimuli for the task, 3) revision of the first version by expert judges, 4) reformulations according to judge’s suggestions and construction of the second version of task; 5) analysis of the new version by previous judges, 6) definition of the final version of the task. Were included 72 stimuli divided into frequent words (24) non frequent words (24) and 24 pseudowords. Each group was composed by regular, irregular, short and long stimuli. The purpose of this task is to contribute to the cognitive neuropsychological assessment of acquired and development dysgraphias, as well as to characterize the writing profile of clinical groups and healthy adults with different sociodemographic characteristics.

In this text we discuss how polysemous and homonyms words are accessed and what is the role of context during this access. Works by Swinney (1979) and Tanenhaus et al. (1979) support the hypothesis of multiple access, for which the context acts only late in the lexical access of ambiguous words. On the other hand, Tabossi and Zardon (1993) and Simpson (1994) support the hypothesis of selective access, according to which only the sense specified by context is accessed during the reading of an ambiguous word. To check the validity of these assumptions in the access of polysemous and homonyms words, we conducted three experiments of cross-modal priming. The results corroborate the hypothesis of multiple access. Regarding the relationship between polysemy and homonymy, our findings provide evidence for the hypothesis that polysemous and homonyms words are accessed in the same way, even if there are more senses associated with polysemies diachronically.

 Reading and writing activities held between 2010 and 2011, besides interviews with teachers in the 9-year elementary school (9YES), in public schools within the Vale do Rio dos Sinos region constitute the data this work is focused on. From what has been observed, the admission of 6 year old children in the first year is being productive and well valorized by the school community, aiming in a wider mode, to the writing domain during the second year. It is necessary, however, to pay attention to the fact that there are different times for children: whereas some of them evidence the domain of written language during the first year, other children need to go beyond the second year. Studies about those experiences allow us to know even more about how and what for reading and writing in school happens, because those experiences also direct the action and the insertion of students in society.

 This study initiates an exploration of the benefits that a computer-based training could bring to hearing-impaired Secondary students of EFL. A class of six Spanish students (five hearing-impaired and one with a slight cognitive disorder) undertook three sessions of audiovisual training in the computer room. Participants recorded their productions in the course of three sessions, which were analysed taking into account three main variables: tonicity, tonality and tone. Participants with lower outcomes in the first recording showed a higher global improvement in their productions by the end of the training. There were not significant differences between the final outcome of the hearing student and the final outcomes of the five hearing-impaired students.

 Based on studies in the field of Cultural Studies in Education and Deaf Studies, this article focuses on the cultural productions in deaf communities and analyzes the power relations in the construction of cultural meanings. These fields understand deaf culture as a space of contestation and constitution of identities and differences that determine the lives of individuals and populations. This article is based on the partial results of the project "Production, dissemination and consumption of Brazilian deaf culture", developed by researchers at the Graduate Program of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), in partnership with researchers of the Universidade Federal de Pelotas (UFPel) and the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM).

 This article aims at examining two basic biological concepts with special import for Biolinguistics: the Critical Period and the cortical representations. The Critical Period is a special time window in early infancy during which there is exceptional neuronal plasticity. Language is structurally developed in this time, but vocabulary incrementation is not directly subject to a time window. It can be continuously acquired throughout one’s life, thanks to our capacity to represent form and concept relationally, through saussurean arbitrariness. Given these biological concepts, the authors will comment on a study that investigates the establishment of saussurean arbitrariness in babies: Lima, Gesualdi & França (2009).

Partindo de uma carta pessoal, enviada por Maurice Blanchot a Jacques Derrida, este ensaio procura rastrear os temas da correspondência, da distância e da transmissão de ideias no pensamento crítico contemporâneo. Argumenta, além disso, que a troca de cartas constitui já um ramo da filosofia – como atestam os trabalhos de Martin Heidegger, Peter Sloterdijk e Jacques Derrida analisados no texto. Todo esse cenário se desenvolve, desde as linhas iniciais, sob o signo da reflexão blanchotiana a respeito da leitura do tempo e da tradição. Tal reflexão ecoa, finalmente, em uma teoria da comunidade como espaço de debate e de mobilidade epistemológica. ************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************ Inexorable fidelity: Blanchot, Heidegger e Derrida Abstract: Starting with a personal letter, sent by Maurice Blanchot to Jacques Derrida, this essay attempts to track the topics of correspondence, distance and transmission of ideas in the contemporary critical thought. It also argues that the exchange of letters is now a branch of Philosophy – as demonstrated by the works of Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida and Peter Sloterdijk examined in the text. This whole scenario unfolds, since its opening lines, under the sign of Blanchotian thought about reading of time and tradition. Such reflection echoes finally in a theory of community conceived as a space for debate and epistemological mobility. Keywords: Philosophy; Literary criticism; Humanism; Maurice Blanchot; Jacques Derrida

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The work resumes the results achieved by the research project “A study of primary sources: the presence of the Brazilian literature in Portuguese journals of 19th century (1850- 1900), that derives from a post-doctoral internship held in 2008, in National Library of Portugal, with the support of CAPES. After several published articles and presented communications, it is made here a balance of the collected and analyzed material, that obeyed, predominantly, to the following topics, always having as a corpus Lisbon magazines, newspapers and almanacs: 1) the discovery of unknown authors and texts and/or on the sidelines of historiography; 2) the examination of the literary relationship between Brazil and Portugal in 19th century; 3) the reception, in Portugal, of authors belonging to Brazilian literature.

The production and realisation by the Rede Globo of a mini-series inspired by Eça de Queirós’s romance Os Maias shows an attempt to deepen the presence of the author in Brazil. This was also an exercise that raised important questions related to the problems of adaptation. From the script written by Maria Adelaide Amaral, the producer Luis Fernando Carvalho directed a first version that was shown on TV as a series of episodes. Later this producer proceeded with a new edition, now for DVD, in which he readjusted, removed or added from the original production. In this new edition a tension with the author of the script is deduced. Subordinating to the format that a DVD edition requires – in terms of support, language and medium, and also to the standard quality of Globo – the Os Maias kept, in this passage on TV much of their condition of a great literary work.

This paper undertakes to analyze Barranco de cegos, by Alves Redol, in order to affirm the importance of this literary work in the Portuguese literary Neorealism. It is intended to demonstrate the current approach of some of his principal axiological senses. It is a problematization of symbolic figurations and the ideological discourse constituted by certain narrative strategies put into action in the novel. It is considered the network between History with literary fiction, as well the relations between ideology and utopia, phenomenon constituded of social imaginary, according to thought of Paul Ricoeur.