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Portuguese nasal vowels as phonological diphthongs
Lingua 6 1 (1983) 157- 177. North-Holland
PORTUGUESE DIPHTHONGS*
NASAL
157
VOWELS
AS PHONOLOGICAL
Stephen PARKINSON University
of Aberdeen,
Great
Britain
Received March 1983 Portuguese nasal vowels have been analysed as phonological vowel + nasal consonant sequences, on the grounds that they function as closed syllables. At the same time, oral diphthongs have been analysed as vowel + semivowel sequences, with little consideration of the question of syllable-structure. It is argued that Portuguese oral diphthongs should be analysed phonologically as true diphthongs (complex syllablenuclei), and that this analysis is also appropriate for nasal vowels (monophthongs and diphthongs), which have a number of phonological properties in common with the oral diphthongs. The evidence for analysing nasal vowels as closed syllables is reconsidered, and is found to be valid in only one of three cases, the remaining two cases supporting the present analysis. The two analyses are reconcilable, in that nasal vowels can be vowel + consonant sequences in ‘deep’ phonology and diphthongs in surface phonology.
1.
The question of the phonological status of Portuguese nasal vowels has been under discussion by phonologists since the first phonemic studies of the language by Hall (1943a, b) and Sten (1944). In European circles the generally accepted analysis is that developed inside the framework of Prague school phonol,ogy by CZimara (1953: 89-97) and Barbosa (1962, 1965 : ch. 3) which identifies nasal vowels as phonological sequences of oral vowel *
This article follows the terminology established by Lacerda and Head (1966) in distinguishing vowels from nasalized vowels. Nasal vowels are vowels with phonemically distinctive nasality, while nasalized vowels are allophonic variants of oral vowels. The term ‘vowel’ is used broadly, to refer to the class of syllabic vocoids: monophfhongs and diphthongs are subclasses of the class of vowels. AI1 quotations from Portuguese sources have been tacitly translated.
nasal
0024-3841/83/$3.00
0
Elsevier Science Publishers
B.V. (North-Holland)
158
S. Parkinson
/ Portuguese
nasal vowels
+ nasal consonant inside the same syllable, thus analysing nasal vowels as phonological closed syllables. For convenience.1 shall refer to this analysis as the ‘VN analysis’. American structuralists have usually preferred a less abstract monophonemic analysis (the ‘v analysis’) (Hall * 1943b : 12; Head 1964). (This is a simplified picture, as there were American proponents of the VN analysis (Trager 1943a, b; Reed and Leite 1947) and European opponents of it (Hammarstrom 1962; Tlaskal 1980) : Vandresen (1975) gives a clear account of the different theoretical assumptions that motivated the choice of analysis by different schools.) Generative phonologists (Saciuk 1970; Brasington 1971; St. Clair 1973 ; Mateus 1975; Brake1 1979) have espoused a variant of the VN analysis, on morphological grounds: to give a common underlying form to related forms such as som ‘sound’ [‘so] and sonor ‘sonorous’ [su’noru] or origem ‘origin’ [o’ri@i] and originar ‘to originate’ [ori$‘nar] one must postulate underlying VN sequences for the nasal vowels of som and origern (Mateus 1975 : 46). This is not the same hypothesis as the VN analysis, since the underlying VN sequences of generative accounts are not always contained in the same syllable, and so nasal vowels are not necessarily closed syllables. For instance, the nasal vowel [q in in& ‘sister’ [ir’ms], is derived from an underlying form /irmana/. I shall argue for an intermediate position. Nasal vowels are indeed made up of two phonological segments, one oral and one nasal, but the second element is a vowel rather than a consonant, and nasal vowels are true diphthongs, and thus open syllables, rather than vowel + consonant sequences and closed syllables. I shall call this analysis the ‘VV analysis’.
To justify this analysis I must -cast my net wider, and consider the oral and nasal falling diphthongs of Portuguese. (The rising diphthongs are not included here, as they are phonetic realisations of bisyllabic vowel sequences (-mara 1953: 75), except for /wa/ which requires a special analysis.) VN analyses are ambivalent about the phonological structure of the falling diphthongs. On the one hand they identify them as vowel + semivowel sequences, justifying the analysis by structural parallels with VC sequences : yet they do ,not explicitly claim that diphthongs are closed syllables, and the arguments used to show nasal vowels to be closed syllables (and thus VC sequences) would show oral diphthongs to be open syllables in two cases and closed syllables in a third (see section 5 for discussion).
S. Parkinson
1 Portuguese
nasal vowels
159
From a phonological point of view there is no room for equivocation. Semivowels are consonants, being defined as vocalic segments in consonantal (non-nuclear) position. A diphthong analysed as vowel + semivowel is by definition a VC sequence, and therefore a closed syllable. The phonological criteria of structure and function which govern such phonological analyses must be kept clearly distinct from the phonetic criteria governing the selection of a phonetic transcription for falling diphthongs: whether we transcribe muu ‘bad’ as [‘maw] or [‘ma_u] is a separate issue from that of whether we analyse it as /maw/ or /ma_u/. In fact, purely phonetic considerations should lead us to transcribe Portuguese falling diphthongs as vowel + vowel complexes. They are complex nuclei with a smooth transition between the two elements, as is indicated by the description given by Lacerda: “a vowel oriented in the direction of as lax [i] or [u]” (Lacerda and Strevens 1956: 15). (For similar descriptions, see Sweet 1884: 207, 234; GuimarZes 1927: 45; Liidtke 1953: 212; Strevens 1954 : 9.) On phonological grounds, too, there must be serious doubts over representing diphthongs as vowel + semivowel. This type of analysis is well motivated only where the semivowels /j/ and /w/ are found as independent phonemes in pre-vocalic contexts, which is clearly not the case in Portuguese. A similar argument could be levelled at the W analysis, since the nasal vocalic segments which it postulates are only found in complex nuclei, and do not correspond to any segment found in other contexts (as opposed to the VN analysis which postulates nasal consonants in syllable-initial and syllable-final position). This argument is not conclusive, however : it is quite possible to analyse nasal consonants and the nasal vocalic element as realisations, in different syllabic contexts, of the same phonological type of [-cons + nas] segment, just as semivowels are variants of vocalic phonemes. For the purposes of the present paper, this extension of the W analysis will not be pursued further. I shall argue that oral diphthongs, nasal monophthongs and nasal diphthongs all have the same basic phonological structure, namely that of a diphthong or complex syllable-nucleus : oral diphthongs. have an oral second segment and nasal monophthongs and diphthongs a nasal second segment. The difference between nasal monophthongs and diphthongs is thus a matter of the quality of the second segment, rather than of the number of segments. The differences between the VN and W analyses are set out in (1).
160
S. Parkinson
(1) Oral diphthong e.g. [aiJ Nasal monophthong e.g. [i] Nasal diphthong e.g. [HJ
/ Portuguese
nasal vowels
VN analysis
W
IVCI (/a$) IVNI (/iNA /VCN/ (/o_iN/)
/WI (/ail) /VT/ (/ii/ or /i j) PSI
analysis
(lo20
3.
There are several phonetic arguments for preferring the VN analysis to the v analysis. They do not, however, give it a similar advantage over the VV analysis. Instrumental phonetic analysis (Lacerda and Head 1966; Lacerda and Strevens 1956; Mateus 1975: 94) shows that the nasality of a nasal monophthong or diphthong is mainly located in the latter portion of the syllablenucleus. It is further noted that the strength of nasality in a preconsonantal nasal vowel is inversely proportional to the prominence of the nasal consonant usually found between the vowel and the consonant. Both these effects follow logically from the VN analysis: the nasality of the vowel is the result of the assimilation into the vowel of the syllable-final nasal consonant of the phonological form, so that it is to be expected that the nasality will occur at the position of the underlying consonant, and that the degree of nasality will depend on the degree to which the consonant is effaced. (The postvocalic nasal consonants are, according to the VN analysis, retained underlying consonants rather than inserted transitions.) But the VV analysis also predicts these effects. The phonological representation /fl/ already has the nasality located in the second portion of the nucleus : any consonantal transition will be a conversion of the second portion of the underlying diphthong into a more consonantal articulation, which will automatically reduce the length of the nasal portion of the nucleus. It should be noted that the presence of nasal consonants between a nasal vowel and a following consonant cannot by itself be taken as evidence for the VN analysis (pace Barbosa 1962 ; Almeida 1976), or any other biphonemic analysis, since such consonants can equally well, if not better, be explained as phonetic transitions (HammarstrGm 1962). They are significant, however, for evaluating generative variants of the VN analysis. Postvocalic nasal consonants are found not only intraverbally but also interverbally, when a word-final nasal vowel is followed by a word-initial consonant, as in in&i bonita ‘pretty sister’ pronounced [ir’mEmbu’nite].
S. Parkinson
J Portuguese
nasal vowels
161
This is an embarassment for any generative account which claims that such consonants are retained underlying consonants, because at no stage in the derivation of irm6 or irmii bonita is there a word-final nasal consonant: the derivation of irma” is:
(2)
/irmana/ Nasalisation
irmlna
N-deletion
irmaa
Contraction
irml
Other
[irImE]
rules
(following
Mateus
1975
: 51)’
So if there is a nasal consonant in irmii bonita, it cannot be the underlying nasal consonant, and must be the result of some process of glide epenthesis. Once you admit a rule of glide epenthesis, you have effectively conceded the argument over whether these nasal consonants are underlying or inserted. In addition, the W analysis is better placed to handle the special relationship between diphthongs and monophthongs in the set of nasal vowels. The diphthong [e?J ([EJ in Lisbon Portuguese) is the realisation of the monophthong /e/ in word-final position, just as many occurrences of [E_ti] are word-final realisations of /G/ (Lipski 1973 : 70 claims that these are not ‘true phonological diphthongs’). If the monophthongs /Z/ and /C/ are already diphthongs in phonological representation, we require only a rule modifying the quality of the second portion of the underlying diphthong rather than a complicated morphophonemic rule of diphthongisation. In some dialects of Portuguese, atonic final nasal vowels have been denasalised and diphthongs monophthongised and denasalised, e.g. o@ ‘orphan’ (fem.) [‘orfn], homem ‘man’ [‘omal] corresponding to standard forms [‘art%], [‘omg]. No dialect, however, shows denasalisation of atonic diphthongs without concurrent monophthongisation. If this is part of the dynamism of the language, as Tlaskal (1980) claims, then the W analysis best represents the dynamic process involved. As the nasality of a nasal diphthong is located in second segment, monophthongisation and denasalisation are the same process, namely deletion of the second segment.
’
For
alternative
239, 386.
analyses
which
avoid
this problem,
see Brake1
1979;
Parkinson
1979-80:
S. Parkinson
162
/ Portuguese
nasal vowels
4. The evidence of syllable-structure suggests that nasal monophthongs, nasal diphthongs and oral diphthongs are of the same type, since they have the same distribution. The possible syllable-final configurations of Portuguese are shown in (3).2 (IS/, /R/ and /L/ represent the classes of. sibilants, vibrants and laterals respectively. All oppositions of quality inside these classes are neutralised in syllable-final position, so that the units occurring in this context are strictly speaking the archiphonemes of these classes.) (3) -0:
oral monophthong oral diphthong nasal mondphthong nasal diphthong _S : oral monophthong oral diphthong nasal monophthong nasal diphthong _R : oral monophthong _L : oral monophthong
esfd [i’jta] ‘it is’ vai [‘vaiJ ‘he goes’ irti [irImE] ‘sister’ tie [‘mEi] ‘mother’ e&s [i’jtaj] ‘you are’ cuis [‘kaiJ] ‘platform’ irm& [ir’m$] ‘sisters’ ma”es [‘miZ_l]‘mothers’ estar [i’jtar] ‘to be’ hotel [o’td] ‘hotel’
Clearly, oral monophthongs form a class on their own, as they are the only type of syllable-nucleus which may be followed by a consonant other than IS/. To account for this, a VN analysis such as Barbosa’s (1965 : 21&I 1) has to distinguish between four classes of syllable-final consonants: the semivowels /jw/ (which I shall informally represent as /cl), the nasal consonants represented by their archiphoneme /N/, the sibilant archiphoneme IS/, and the class of lateral and vibrant archiphonemes /L R/ (which I shall represent as /L/). In terms of these classes, the formula for syllablecodas will be: (4) v{ ;)
(N)
‘“I}
This formula completely conceals the fact that /cl, /N/ and /cN/ all have the same distribution. In the W analysis they are all the same unit, postvocalic /VI : 2 Syllable-final plosives are found in a number of neologisms, e.g. adnato ‘adnate’ [ad’natu]. Such forms are not taken into consideration here, and do not affect the analysis.
S. Parkinson
(5)
W)
/ Portuguese
nasal vowels
163
w
V 1 (L)
i
Considerations of syllable-division also point to the W analysis. In Portuguese, as in most languages, single intervocalic consonants are syllableinitial. Thus sala ‘room’ is [‘sa.ln], with the syllable-boundary (marked by .) falling before the /l/, and terem ‘(for) them to have’ is [‘te.rE]. This principle holds for phrases as well as for single words : word-final consonants, which are syllable-final when the word is pronounced in isolation, become syllable-initial when a vowel follows. Thus the final /l/ of sal ‘salt’ becomes syllable-initial in sal e pimenta ‘salt and pepper’ [Isa. li . pi. mZ. tel. However, as Madonia (1969) pointed out, this process does not affect the last elements of diphthongs or nasal vowels: saia ‘skirt’ is [ ‘[email protected]], t6m ‘they have’ is [‘@I. __ EI] and comeu e bebeu ‘(s)he ate and drank’ is [ku’me_u. i . ba’be_u]. (This shows how wrong Barbosa was to argue for the existence of semivowel phonemes “unites qui ne commutent qu’avec des consonnes” (1965 : 185), on the basis of the supposed parallelism of saia and sala.) When a nasal vowel is followed by another vowel, there is no trace of a syllable-initial consonant : la” azul ‘blue wool’ is [‘El. tz’zul]. (All these facts had been pointed orthography suggested out by Viana (1883: 104), when the unreformed that there might be a nasal consonant in the last example, then spelt Ian azul.) Beside this process of resyllabication, there is a phonetic process of hiatus-breaking which results in the appearance of transitional glides between two vowels in hiatus. The earlier examples tgrn and comeu e bebeu could be pronounced [‘tC%i] and [kume_u%babe_u]. As such glides always occur __ in addition to the vowel, there is no question of treating them as realisations of an underlying segment (CXmara 1953 : 72, 75). Almeida (1976 : 364) falls into this particular trap when he claims that the phrase sim, P ‘yes, it is’ is pronounced [‘si’pc], and that the consonant b] is a resyllabified final nasal consonant : a more accurate transcription of this type of pronunciation is [s&l, the m being the glide regularly found between front vowels in hiatus, as in P, P ‘it is, it is’ pronounced [&I. While /J-I/ is often realised as m (Willis 1967), one cannot assume that every case of F] is a realisation of IpI. Syllable-division, then, is consistent with syllable-structure in indicating that the second elements of diphthongs and nasal vowels are more closely bound to the syllable-nucleus than the clear cases of consonants are.
S. Parkinson
164
/ Portuguese
nasal vowels
5.
We must now reconsider three well-known arguments for the VN analysis, concerning the distribution of spirant variants of voiced plosives, the process of ‘erase’ or interverbal vowel contraction and the distribution of the two vibrant phonemes. 5.1.
Barbosa (1965 : 92-3) claims that the voiced stops /b d g/ appear as the corresponding voiced fricatives [p a r] in intervocalic position and in intervocalic obstruent-resonant clusters, except when the preceding vowel is nasal. Thus we find fricative allophones in mudo ‘dumb’ [‘mubu] and sobra ‘it is too much’ [‘s#re] and stops in mundo ‘world’ [‘madu] and sombra ‘shade’ [‘Gbrrz]. Nasal vowels are thus shown to affect plosives in a way unlike oral vowels: this difference can be explained if nasal vowels are analysed as closed syllables, since fricatives only appear intervocalically and a plosive preceded by a VN sequence would not be intervocalic in phonological representation. The argument is impeccable, but the facts on which it is based are not. Closer examination of the phonetics of the Portuguese voiced plosives shows that Barbosa’s account is oversimplified. Firstly, it is inaccurate to claim that there are only two allophones for each plosive phoneme, a stop and a fricative. There is in fact a whole range of variants for each phoneme, displaying various degrees of weakening of the stop closure. It is not even true that the most common weakened allophone is a fricative. Liidtke (1951 : 354) stresses the difference between this sound-type and the true fricatives of Portuguese: “The basic difference between [v z 31 on the one hand the presence or absence of what Spanish phoneticians that
can
be prolonged”.
Viana similarly indicates “Le
contact
il cesse
and [p 8 y] on the other consists in call rehilamiento, a strong friction
a momentary
se forme
comme
pour
prononcer
immkdiatement
apr&
qu’il
s’est ktabli,
de I’air, lequel s’tchappe avait pas lieu de contact. des plosives
et finissent
articulation
:
b d g .._ seulement et avant
de devenir
ce contact un
obstacle
est t&s kger, au passage
librement, produisant un certain bourdonnement, comme On peut dire de ces trois articulations qu’elles commencent comme
des fricatives”
(Viana
1903a:
19).
s’il n’y comme
S. Parkinson / Portuguese
165
nasal vowels
Strevens (1954 : 24) identifies affricates [bl3 da gy] as alternatives to fricatives, as I was able to confirm by my own observation of pronunciations such aspedacos ‘pieces’ [pa’daasuj]. This is almost certainly the type of articulation which Lacerda and Hammarstrijm (1952 : 132) evasively label as “a type of consonant intermediate between the fricative and the obstruent”. All these descriptions point to a flapped stop articulation3 as defined by Catford (1977: 128): “In flap, one articulating organ approaches another, makes momentary contact and then recedes again”. Secondly, the distribution of strong and weak variants is not as clear-cut as Barbosa claims. Sweet noted that all realisations of the voiced stops were laxly articulated : “b d g are approximate vowels”
pronounced
with
a less energetic
to [p d y] respectively,
(Sweet
and
closure
sometimes
than
in English,
are actually
so that
opened,
they
especially
always between
1884: 210).
and it is his view, rather than Viana’s, which seems to inform the International Phonetic Association’s transcription note: “b d g generally [p ?I y] except initially” (1949: 23). Viana, on the other hand, claimed that the strong and weak variants were in free variation (1903a: 19; 1904). The truth is somewhere between the two positions, as more detailed studies show that while there are contexts which favour plosive weakening and contexts which do not, there are few if any contexts where only one or other type is found .4 Weak plosives are found following all the regular syllable-final consonants : frequently following [3], less frequently [r] and rarely p] (Viana 1883 : 104, 108 ; Lacerda and Hammarstriim 1952 : 128 ; Strevens 1954: 24). Table 1 gives a statistical analysis of the incidence of strong and weak plosives in transcription texts published by Viana (1903a), Guimaraes (1927) and Lacerda and Hammarstriim (1952), and in my own transcription of a passage read by a Lisbon informant. The simple rule of Spirantization (6) implicit in Barbosa’s account
(6) /bdg/+[Pbyl/V.-(C)V 3
Other
oclusivo’ and 4
impressionistic in Ribeiro
5% Nogueira Clearly,
the
terms
(1973:
for the flapped
18), ‘occlusive
: 42)), semi-plosive
(1938 difftculty
in distinguishing
stop include
a articulation and
‘failed
clearly
‘incomplete imparfaite’
plosive’
between
stop’
(Guimarles strong
(‘imperfeitamente
in Barbosa and
(1965:
4243)
1927: 61). weak
plosives
will
contribute to the indeterminacy in their distribution. Its main effect, however, will be to lead to an under-estimation of the distribution of weakened plosives, as flaps and affricates will be identified
as strong
rather
than
weak
plosives.
166
S. Parkinson
/ Portuguese
nasal vowels
1
Table
Incidence
of strong
and
Formal Contexts
weak
voiced
plosives /Informal
style
Guimarges
Viana
s
swsw
w
in sample
Lacerda
texts
styie Parkinsona
Total
SW
s
w
v-v
39
192
30
139
4
12
31
47
104
390
V-R
13
6
1
14
3
0
9
3
26
23
v-c V -##
4
0
1132
23
2
31
5
0
0
0
0
0
1
7
4
7
5
s-v
12
17
3
14
0
2
11
3
26
36
LV
18
7
13
4
0
1
c-v
9
I
9
472
13
2
3
2
1
39
2
38
0
14
3
0
2
150
233
100
# f-V Vc-c Total a
Parkinson
1979-80:
0
1
38
26
2
38
14
2
13
0
41 30
15 4
23
0
114
3
25
2
36
7
165
65
453
502
065 178
-I 16
124.
is inaccurate because it represents a complex phonetic process as a categorial phonological rule. A further indication of the phonetic nature of the process comes from the realisation that the ‘rule’ must be stated in terms of phonetic context, rather than in terms of phonological context. In normal relaxed speech the effacement of unstressed vowels creates consonant clusters not found in formal speech or citation forms: in these clusters, weakened plosives are not found (unless the cluster is one of the normal contexts for weakening). Viana recognised this in his later work (1903a: 37) when he contrasted the slow and fast speech versions of the phrase pede tuub ‘he asks for everything’ : in slow speech [pcbatuau] both cases of /d/ are intervocalic and weakened, while in fast speech [psdtuau] the first /d/ is preconsonantal and is not weakened.5 Messner’s statistics for the frequency of plosive allophones confirm this, showing more weak plosives in citation forms than in conversation (1976: 439-41): (7)
Conversation: Dictionary
’
Viana’s
of God’,
earlier transcribed
:
[b d g]
449 occurrences
[g b r]
381 occurrences
[b d g]
3.105%
[p b v]
4.66%
statements,
and
[e’kazeb’&rJ]
of total
especially (Viana
examples
such
1883: 104) did not
of total
as a casa take
de Deus
this into
‘the
account.
house
S. Parkinson
/ Portuguese
nasal vowels
167
An apparent exception to the priority of phonetic context is found in the frequent occurrence of weakened plosives in word-final and phrase-final position, when the vowel [a] following them in citation forms is effaced (e.g. pede ‘he asks’ pronounced [‘pea]). In this case, however, the plosive is weakened not because it is intervocalic in phonological representation but because it is in an atonic final syllable and thus subject to the very general process of articulatory weakening affecting such syllables: the wellknown reduction of atonic vowels is just one aspect of this weakening of atonic syllables, which can also result in the devoicing of the vowel and the devoicing and/or weakening of the initial consonant of the syllable (Viana 1903b; Strevens 1954: 24-25). The mechanism governing the weakening of voiced plosives is not a phonological rule at all, but a concrete phonetic process, the kind of automatic effect of the interaction of different articulations that Harms (1978) labelled ‘non-rules’. In Portuguese, all voiced stops are articulated laxly, that is with a less energetic closure gesture than their voiceless counterparts. Various aspects of phonetic context - the overall strength of articulation, the nature of adjacent articulations - will tend to reinforce or inhibit the closure, leading to a full plosive (reinforced), a flapped stop or affricate (weak closure) or a fricative or frictionless continuant (no closure). Intervocalic position will inhibit closure, since the tongue or lips will have to move from and return to a quite open position: adjacent consonants, particularly of the same place of articulation, will reinforce the closure as the tongue will not have the same distance to travel.6 (The flap [r] is an exception to this rule: as a flap is by definition a movement to and from a brief closure, so the alveolar closure of [r] will not reinforce the stop in /rd/ or /dr/ sequences as the closure of the [r] cannot be prolonged.) Once we reject the rule of spirantization in its form (6) or in any of the more complex proposals (e.g. Pardal 1977: 185-89), Barbosa’s argument loses much of its force, since the crucial element determining spirantization will be the degree to which the offgliding portion of the nasal vowel 6 This analysis could be interpreted as predicting that in careful speech, where articulations are generally less lax, there would be a tendency to use strong rather than weak plosives even in intervocalic position. In fact, careful speech seems to be subject to a separate rule by which intervocalic /d/ (and to a lesser extent /b/ and /g/) are realised as continuants, often with a greater degree of friction than is found in the weakened plosives of relaxed speech. This is an example of what Line11 (1979 : 5455) calls sharpened pronunciation, involving an exaggeration of certain allophonic distinctions.
168
S. Parkinson
f Portuguese
nasal vowels
assimilates to the consonant: if there is a noticeable transition (a postvocalic consonant) the following consonant articulation will be reinforced, while a weak transition will allow the consonant to be weakened. The frequency of strong plosives is thus no more than the corollary of the frequency of transitions. As the postvocalic nasal consonants are accounted for by all competing theories, the case of spirantization cannot be an argument for the VN analysis. It is interesting to note that the account I have given of spirantization casts doubt on Barbosa’s assertion that weakened plosives never occur after nasal vowels: as weakened plosives can be found after all other VC sequences, it would make nasal vowels an exceptional type of closed syllable. In fact, weakened plosives can be observed after nasal vowels. The sample analysed in table 1 has three such cases, listed below: (8)
cada urn de vds [kS3etC$voj] que se esquecem
depois
quando [kyEnCm]
(Lacerda
and
[kasai]k&ndapo$]
(Guimaraes
1927:
Hammarstrijm (Guimarles
1952: 1927
128)
: 131)
131)
and further examples can be found in other (1927: 151, 153).7
of Guimarges’
transcriptions
5.2. Portuguese has a syntactic phonetic process of vowel contraction, by which the final vowel of a word tends to fuse with the initial vowel of a following word, when there is close transition between them. The classic account of this process was given by Viana (1883) whose high reputation seems to have stifled further research into the topic (with the honourable exceptions of Lacerda and Hammarstrom 1952; Almeida 1976). According to Viana, contraction occurs between identical vowels (i.e. identical vowel phonemes)* so long as the first is not nasal. There is contraction in ca.ra azul ‘blue house’ /kaza azul/ [kazazul] and casa antiga ‘old house’ /kaza atiga/ [kazgtige] but not in 16 azul ‘blue wool’ /la azul/ [I%zul]. Cgmara
‘I It may seem that the presence contradicts
what
Guimarles, like the other any noticeable transition.
phoneticians
* Viana did not make any many early members of the (Barbosa
of a postvocalic
has been said about
1965: 29-44).
In
nasal consonant
the relationship discussed
in GuimarHes’
of transitions
in section
7, undoubtedly
explicit use of a concept resembling IPA he had a clear appreciation of
this
case
he
bracketed
together
the
transcriptions
and consonant
weakening.
uses [n] to indicate
the phoneme, the phonemic
vowels
[a],
[a]
but like principle and
[e].
S. Parkinson
/ Portuguese
nasal vowels
169
(1953) was the first to relate this process to the VN analysis of nasal vowels, observing that the presence of a consonant as final segment of the phonological representation of nasal vowels would effectively prevent contraction with a following vowel, as the phonological representation of the phrase would contain a VN #V sequence (e.g. la azul as /laN azul/) instead of the V#V sequence required for contraction. Once again, the VN analysis rests on an over-simple phonetic statement. CImara did not refer specifically to Viana’s work, claiming that the facts of contraction were common knowledge (1953 : 94); none of those citing Viana’s statements about nasal vowels noticed his equally significant statement that oral diphthongs do not contract with following vowels, which would have led to the conclusion that oral diphthongs were closed syllables. But even Viana’s detailed description needs to be modified in two crucial respects. Firstly, contraction is not an all-or-nothing process, which either happens or does not happen. Various degrees of contraction can be identified. Lacerda and Hammarstrijm identified one intermediate degree of contraction : “at most hearings we had the impression of a single vowel, but at times we decided that it was a case of a repeated vowel” (1952 : 133). My own detailed study (Parkinson 1979-80: ch. 2, sect. 6) identified a scale of degrees of contraction reproduced in (9): (9) Degrees of conrracfion Minimum
Maximum V
V [kazazul]
[kazaJzul]
v_V [kazr?_ezul]
vv
vv
[kazeezul]
[kaze’%zul]
Secondly, the statement that nasal vowels do not contract with following vowels is too categorical. Nasal vowels do not contract with the same frequency or to the same degree as oral vowels in similar contexts, but they do nevertheless undergo contraction. Almeida (1976 : 364) was the first to demonstrate this. Realising that sentence-stress inhibited contraction, he recorded pronunciations of a sentence in which the classic example lZ azul was placed in a phrasal context where it did not attract sentence-stress: esta la’ an.4 t? uma porcaria ‘this blue wool is rubbish’. The phrase 16 azul was pronounced [li?xzul], with contraction.g Similar sentences of my own
9
Almeida’s
broad
original
transcription”
transcription in which
was
postvocalic
[Ii%nzul]. Almeida nasal
consonants
uses what are always
he calls
a “normalizing
included.
S. Parkinson 1 Portuguese
170
nasal vowels
devising, such as 0 homem entrou na estagcio de Santa Apolbnia ‘The man went into St. Apollonia Station’ confirmed the point by eliciting other contractions (in this case of the sequence /E(i) - e/ in homem entrou) which would not have been found if the shorter phrase had been spoken in isolation. The process of contraction is governed by a scale (or rather several interacting scales) of contraction resistance. The basic scale, incorporating the parameters of word-stress and clisis, shows that resistance to contraction is greatest in sequences of stressed vowels, and least in sequences of unstressed vowels of which the second is a clitic: (10)
Scale of conrraction resistance vv_ < vv < irv < vv < ifir (i/ = stressed
vowel, V = unstressed vowel, v = clitic)
This is an implicational scale, indicating that speakers will tend to produce fewer and/or less complete contractions in hiatuses high on the scale than in those lower on the scale. Absolute values of frequency and degree of contraction will vary between idiolects. This account is based on an experiment in which four informants read a list of sentences designed to give a full range of hiatuses. They were recorded and transcribed in terms of the system shown in (9), whose five degrees of contraction were assigned numerical values (maximum = 4, minimum = 0) to give a numerical scale. On this basis, an index of contraction could be calculated for each class of hiatuses. The basic indices of contraction were: (11) vv
irv
vir
irir
3.1
2.1
1.1
0.8
Hiatuses with a clitic as second member had a mean index of 3.375, against an index of 2.625 for hiatuses with atonic non-clitic second members. Other parameters which modify the scale but do not create extra subdivisions of it are the degree of sentence-stress and the nature of the nucleus of the first element in the hiatus: falling diphthongs and nasal vowels as first element show a greater resistance to contraction. Clearly, the fact that contraction is possible between a nasal vowel and a following vowel eliminates Camara’s argument for the VN analysis. The VV analysis, on the other hand, is supported by data from contraction. Firstly, the fact that nasal vowels and diphthongs .resist contraction in the same way is consistent with the hypothesis that they have the same
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nasal vowels
171
(VV) structure. Secondly, the fact that nasal vowels and diphthongs resist contraction can be explained as being a result of their diphthongal structure. The scale of contraction resistance shows that contraction is favoured in sequences of low and falling intensity. A falling diphthong already incorporates a pattern of falling intensity: for a following vowel to contract with a diphthong, this vowel must be of even lower intensity than the last segment of the diphthong, which will only be the case with maximally unstressed vowels. In some cases, the second segment of the diphthong can contract with a following vowel, becoming detached from the first segment in the process, and forming a kind of buffer between the two nuclei. (Strictly speaking, the contraction results in a rising diphthong.) This is found in examples such as meu irtio Humberto ‘my brother Humberto’ /meu irm@ tibertu/ in which the sequence /@ .il/ was pronounced [i?.ti], [me_u.ir .mi?.il. ber. tu]. 5.3. The two vibrant phonemes of European Portuguese, the alveolar flap [r] and the uvular trill [R] (postalveolar [r] in many dialects) are in contrast in intervocalic position but in complementary distribution elsewhere, the trill appearing in the remaining syllable-initial contexts and the flap appearing in syllable-final position and as the second member of a syllable-initial cluster, as shown in (12) : (12) Contrast of [I] - [R] Complementary
‘dear’ [‘karu] carro ‘car’ [‘ka~u] ‘moorish’ [‘mow] morro ‘I die’ [‘IIIORU] rio ‘I’iVer’ [‘RiU] distribution : / #__V palrar [R] /C.-V ‘to chat’ [pot’Rar] tenro ‘tender’ [‘t&u] i /v-v amor ‘love’ [e’mor] /V_# /V_.C carta ‘letter’ [‘karte] cabra ‘goat’ [‘kabre] /.C_V car0 mow0
This is the only clear argument in favour of the VN analysis, If nasal vowels were open syllables, then [r] and [R] should contrast freely following them. The fact that only [R] is found indicates that nasal vowels behave as closed syllables in the conditioning of the distribution of the vibrants (Camara 1953: 93). There is more to the distribution of the vibrants, however. Following an oral diphthong, we find a very limited contrast of vibrants. The flap occurs freely, but the trill is extremely rare: the only
S. Parkinson
172
common example toponyms (e.g. a The evidence of vowels are closed syllable.
is
1 Portuguese
nasal vowels
bairro
‘quarter’ [‘b”Ru], all other examples being or neologisms (e.g. eurritmia lo ‘eurhythmics’). the distribution of vibrants seems to show that nasal syllables and oral diphthongs a special type of open
Bairrada)
6. I have shown that Portuguese nasal vowels function as diphthongs in most aspects of Portuguese phonology, with the exception of the case of the distribution of the vibrant phonemes, where they function as closed syllables. This is an embarrassing inconsistency: how can a sound be at the same time a diphthong and a closed syllable? The solution to this paradox is that while the evidence forces us to recognise that nasal vowels are both diphthong and closed syllable, nothing forces us to conclude that they are diphthong and closed syllable simultaneously, or at the same level of structure. If we admit more than one level of phonological and phonetic processes, it is logically possible for a segment to have different phonological representations at successive levels. Nasal vowels can be VN sequences for the stating of deep regularities, such as the distribution of vibrants and the morphophonemic correspondences highlighted by generative analyses; at a less abstract level where regularities of syllable-structure and phonetic processes are stated, they will be diphthongs. It might be objected that the distribution of the vibrants is not a deep regularity, but a surface one: [r] and [R] are similar enough to be realisations of a single archiphoneme //R// in the positions in which their contrast is neutralised. The rule for the distribution of the vibrants would thus be a realisation rule, of the same abstractness as other allophonic rules. This is too simple a view. Firstly, the rule by which //R// is realised is not the only rule to be considered: we must also state the process by which the opposition is neutralised, in other words the statement of the distribution of//R//, a deeper regularity for which nasal vowels still function as closed syllables. Secondly, comparison of Brazilian and European Portuguese shows superficial differences which would be exaggerated if the lo
Example from Barbosa (1965
making
the /r/ word-initial.
in neologisms.
: 177). This word could reasonably
See fn. 2 for another
example
be analysed
of atypical
as /eu #ritmia/,
phonotactic
structures
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173
distribution of vibrants were taken as a surface regularity. In Brazilian Portuguese, there is no uvular trill but a fricative /x/ with a wide range of realisations including [xl, [xl, [K] and [h] (Brake1 1974). There is no rule of distribution of vibrants, as there is only one vibrant, [r]. Yet [r] and [x] are in complementary distribution in the same contexts as the European vibrants, and even if they cannot be members of an archiphoneme they are related by a morphophonemic rule, since they alternate inside inflectional paradigms, for instance in the singular and plural forms of amor ‘love’ : (13)
amor (sg.) [a’mox]
amores
(PI.) [a’morij]
(Note that the distribution of /x/ is wider than that of European [Rf, as lx/ appears in syllable-final contexts occupied by [r] in European Portuguese : this does not alter the fact that the European and Brazilian systems have the same context of neutralisation.) In Brazilian Portuguese, the rule specifying the distribution of [r] and [x] will be a deep phonological or morphophonemic one: the differences between European and Brazilian Portuguese are of the nature of the surface phonological units rather than of the process relating them, so, in the absence of conclusive evidence for the European rule as a surface phonetic rule, we can assign both rules the same position in the phonology. This analysis shows the need to recognise several levels of phonological structure. It should not be taken as supporting generative phonology over classical phonemics. As soon as a Praguean phonological analysis is formalised, it becomes clear that we require at least three levels of structure: the archiphonemic (at which redundancies are stated), the phonemic and the phonetic. We need to distinguish between ‘extrinsic’ allophonic rules (Ladefoged 1965) which state the range of target articulations for a phoneme, and ‘intrinsic’ allophonic statements (‘non-rules’) which explain how concrete articulations are conditioned.
7. Having justified the general principle of the W analysis, we can discuss the more specific issue of the characterisation of the diphthong which underlies nasal monophthongs. The second segment of this diphthong will have no intrinsic vowel quality, since it is realised either as a nasalised continu-
174
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nasal vowels
ation of the first segment or as a glide from it to the following segment. It must thus be characterised as a nasalised vocalic segment unmarked for vowel quality. This analysis, or its embryo, is by no means new. It was first proposed by Louro (1954) who claimed that nasal vowels ended in a nasal schwa @] more or less completely assimilated to adjacent sounds: L‘
in medial or phrase-internal position (they) are usually linked to the next sound by a [;i] which forms a kind of subtle falling diphthong with them and may even replace their final part. It is the vibrations of this G] in instrumental records which lead to the belief that there are genuine syllable-final nasal consonants in Portuguese. . . There is no doubt that, especially when the nasal vowel is followed by a labial consonant, there may appear the phonetic and articulatory equivalent of a nasal consonant [ml. But this [m] is unconscious and passive, resulting simply from that p;] and the closure of the mouth for the pronunciation of the following Jabial” (Louro 1954: 242). .
Barbosa (1965 : 85) criticised this account very unsympathetically, casting doubt on the concept of ‘passive’ articulations (which are of course none other than glides or transitional articulations, a perfectly well-defined phonetic category) and contesting the very existence of Louro’s nasal schwa. There is no doubt, however, that nasal vowels frequently do incorporate an off-glide to or through F] as one of the range of possible transitions.
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Table 2 shows the results of a systematic study of nasal vowel-consonant transitions for one representative speaker. The case of the elusive postvocalic nasal transitions is in fact a subtle example of the subjective nature of phonetic observation. For nearly a century, phoneticians have approached their subject-matter under the influence of the question of whether or not there were postvocalic nasal consonants in Portuguese. Those phoneticians who detected postvocalic nasal segments (Viana 1892, 1903a ; Nobiling 1903 ; GuimarZes 1927 ; Strevens 1954; Head 1964; Almeida 1976) represented them as consonants because that is all they expected to find. When the data are approached with a narrower transcription system and a broader range of options in mind, non-consonantal transitions are easily observable. The speech-sample tabulated in table 2, for instance, includes pronunciations such as tinto _ ‘red (wine)’ [‘ti?u] and rim frio ‘cold kidney’ [‘Ria’friu] : these would very probably have been transcribed [‘tintu] and [‘Rim’friu] by Almeida and others. Louro’s analysis cannot be incorporated into the VV analysis as it stands, because [a] is not a phoneme of European Portuguese (Camara 1953: 84; Mateus 1975: 25) and is not found at all in Brazilian Portuguese. A more satisfactory version is possible inside the theoretical framework provided by Lass (1976: ch. 6). According to Lass, the distinctive features of a phonological system are not an unordered set, but fall into several blocks or submatrices, of which the most important is the oral submatrix or set of features relating to oral cavity articulations. Lass argues that beside conventional archiphonemes (segments unspecified for one or more features) we need to allow for segments which are unspecified for whole submatrices super-archiphonemes involving the neutralisation of all the features of a given set. In the case of the oral submatrix, these are segments unspecified for all ,vowel-quality and place of articulation features: a ‘neutralisation vowel’, a ‘neutralisation stop’ and so on. English has [a] as neutralisation vowel and [?] as neutralisation stop: other languages have [h] as neutralisation fricative. The second element of the nasal diphthong underlying nasal monophthongs in Portuguese is precisely this type of segment - a vowel lacking in intrinsic vowel-quality specifications.
References Almeida, A. de, 1976. Portuguese Radefeld (1976), 349-396.
nasal
vowels:
Phonetics
and
phonemics.
In:
Schmidt-
176
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j Portuguese
nasal vowels
Barbosa, J. Morais, 1962. Les voyelles nasales portugaises : InterprCtation phonologique. In : Proceedings of the 4th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Helsinki, 1961, 691-708. The Hague: Mouton. Barbosa, J. Morais, 1965. Etudes de phonologie portugaise. Lisbon : Junta de Investiga@o de Ultramar. Brakel, C. A., 1974. Portuguese //r * i// : Luisitanean and Brazilian allophones. Studies in Linguistics 24, l-16. Brake], C.A., 1979. A gram&tica gerativa e a pluralizaqgo em portugu&s. Boletim de Filologia 25, 55-96. Brasington, R., 1971. Noun pluralization in Brazilian Portuguese. Journal of Linguistics 7, 1.5-177. Qmara, J. Mattoso, 1949. Para o estudo da fon&mica portuguesa: OS fonemas em portugu&s. Boletim de Filologia (Rio de Janeiro) 3, I-30. CXmara, J. Mattoso, 1953. Para o estudo da fonemica portuguesa. Rio de Janeiro: Simdes. Catford, J. C., 1977. Fundamental problems in phonetics. Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press. GuimarBes, J. J. de Oliveira, 1927. FonCtica portuguesa. Comp&dio de ortologia national. Coimbra : Faculdade de Letras. Hall, R.A., Jr., 1943a. The unit phonemes of Brazilian Portuguese. Studies in Linguistics I (IS), l-6. Hall, R. A., Jr., 1943b. .Occurrence and orthographic representation of phonemes in Brazilian Portuguese. Studies in Linguistics 2(l), 6-13. Hammarstriim, G., 1962. Discussion. In : Barbosa (1962). Harms, R. A., 1978. Some non-riles of English. In : M.A. Jazayery et al. (eds.), Literary and linguistic studies in honour of Archibald Hill, vol. 2, 39-51. Trends in Linguistics, vol. 8. The Hague: Mouton. Head, B.F., 1964. A comparison of the segmental phonology of Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro. Austin: University of Texas (unpubl. PhD diss.). IPA - International Phonetic Association, 1949. Principles of the International Phonetic Association. London : University College. Lacerda, A. de, G. HammarstrBm, 1952. TranscriGIo fonttica do portuguis normal. Revista do Laboratbrio de Fonktica Experimental (Coimbra) 1, 119-135. Lacerda, A. de, B. F. Head, 1966. Analise de sons nasais e sons nasalizados em portuguis. Revista do Laboratbrio de Fonetica Experimental (Coimbra) 6, 5-71. Lacerda, A. de, P. D. Strevens, 1956. Some phonetic observations using a speech-stretcher. Revista do Laborat6rio de FonCtica Experimental (Coimbra) 3, 5-16. Ladefoged, P., 1965. The nature of general phonetic theories. In : R. J. O’Brien (ed.), Georgetown University Round Table selected papers in linguistics 1961-1965, 28>298. Washington D.C. : Georgetown University Press (I 968). Lass, R., 1976. English phonology and phonological theory. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. Linell, P., 1979. Psychological reality in phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lipski, J. M., 1973. The surface structure of Portuguese: Plurals and other things. Linguistics Ill, 67-82. Louro, J.I., 1954. Estudo e classificaplo das vogais. Boletim de Filologia 15, 215-248. Liidtke, H., 1951. Review of CXmara 1949. Boletim de Filologia 12, 3X3-355.
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nasal vowels
17-I
Liidtke, H., 1952. Fonemltica portuguesa, I : Consonantismo. Boletim de Filologia 13, 27s 288. Liidtke, H., 1953. Fonematica portuguesa, II: Vocalismo. Boletim de Filologia 14, 197-217. Madonia, G., 1969. Les diphtongues dtcroissantes et les voyelles nasales du portugais. La Linguistique 3, 129-I 32. Mateus, M. H. M., 1975. Aspectos da fonologia portuguesa. Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Filologicos. Messner, D., 1976. A statistical approach to Portuguese. In: Schmidt-Radefeld (1976) 425446. Nobiling, 0.. 1903. Die Nasalvokalen im Portugiesischen. Die neueren Sprachen ‘11, 129-153. Nogueira, R. de SB, 1938. Elementos para urn tratado de fonttica portuguesa. Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Filologicos. Pardal, E. d’Andrade, 1977. Aspects de la phonologie (generative) du portugais. Lisbon : Centro de Estudos Filologicos. Parkinson, S. R., 1979-80. The phonological analysis of nasal vowels in Modern European Portuguese. Cambridge : University of Cambridge (unpubl. PhD diss.). Reed, D., Y. Leite, 1947. The segmental phonemes of Brazilian Portuguese. In: K. L. Pike (ed.), Phonemics, 194202. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Ribeiro, J. A. Peral, 1973. Introduction. In : Viana (1973). Saciuk, B., 1970. Some basic rules of Portuguese phonology. In: Studies presented to Robert Lees by his students, 197-212. Edmonton : Linguistic Research Inc. St. Clair, R., 1971. The Portuguese plural formation. Linguistics 68, 90-102. Schmidt-Radefeld, J. (ed.), 1976. Readings in Portuguese linguistics. Amsterdam : NorthHolland Publ. Co. Sten, H., 1944. Les particularitts de la langue portugaise. Travaux du Cercle de Linguistique de Copenhague, no. 2. Copenhagen : Munksgaard. Strevens, P. D., 1954. Some observations on the phonetics and pronunciation of Modern Portuguese. Revista do Laboratorio de Fonetica Experimental (Coimbra), 2, 5-29. Sweet, H,, 1884. Spoken Portugueze. Transactions of the Philological Society 1882-84, 203-237. Tlaskal, J., 1980. Remarques sur les voyelles nasales en portugais. Zeitschrift fur Phonetik 33, 562-570. Trager, G., 1943a. Editorial note to Hall (1943a). Trager, G., 1943b. Editorial note to Hall (1943b). Vandresen, P., 1975. 0 vocalismo portugues: lmplicacbes teoricas. Rev&a Brasileira de Linguistica 2, 8&103. Viana, A. R. Concalves, 1883. Essai de phonetique et de phonologie de la langue portugaise, d’aprts le dialecte actuel de Lisbonne. In : Viana (1973), 83-152. [The article was originally published in Romania 12 (1883), 2998.1 Viana, A. R. Goncalves, 1892. Exposi@o da pronuncia normal portuguesa, para uso de estrangeiros a nacionais. Lisbon: Imprensa National. Viana, A. R. Goncalves, 1903a. Portugais. Phonetique, phonologie, morphologie, textes. Leipzig : Teubner. Viana, A. R. Goncalves, 1903b. Review of E.R. Edwards: Etude phonetique de la langue japonaise. Le Maitre Phonetique (1903), 69-73. Viana, A. R. Goncalves, 1904. Review of 0. Jespersen : Lehrbuch der Phonetik. Le Maitre Phonttique (1904), 128-137. Viana, A. R. Concalves, 1973. Estudos de fonetica portuguesa. Lisbon: Imprensa National. Willis, R.C., 1967. Review of Lacerda and Head 1966. Lingua 18, 98-101.
PORTUGUESE DIPHTHONGS*
NASAL
157
VOWELS
AS PHONOLOGICAL
Stephen PARKINSON University
of Aberdeen,
Great
Britain
Received March 1983 Portuguese nasal vowels have been analysed as phonological vowel + nasal consonant sequences, on the grounds that they function as closed syllables. At the same time, oral diphthongs have been analysed as vowel + semivowel sequences, with little consideration of the question of syllable-structure. It is argued that Portuguese oral diphthongs should be analysed phonologically as true diphthongs (complex syllablenuclei), and that this analysis is also appropriate for nasal vowels (monophthongs and diphthongs), which have a number of phonological properties in common with the oral diphthongs. The evidence for analysing nasal vowels as closed syllables is reconsidered, and is found to be valid in only one of three cases, the remaining two cases supporting the present analysis. The two analyses are reconcilable, in that nasal vowels can be vowel + consonant sequences in ‘deep’ phonology and diphthongs in surface phonology.
1.
The question of the phonological status of Portuguese nasal vowels has been under discussion by phonologists since the first phonemic studies of the language by Hall (1943a, b) and Sten (1944). In European circles the generally accepted analysis is that developed inside the framework of Prague school phonol,ogy by CZimara (1953: 89-97) and Barbosa (1962, 1965 : ch. 3) which identifies nasal vowels as phonological sequences of oral vowel *
This article follows the terminology established by Lacerda and Head (1966) in distinguishing vowels from nasalized vowels. Nasal vowels are vowels with phonemically distinctive nasality, while nasalized vowels are allophonic variants of oral vowels. The term ‘vowel’ is used broadly, to refer to the class of syllabic vocoids: monophfhongs and diphthongs are subclasses of the class of vowels. AI1 quotations from Portuguese sources have been tacitly translated.
nasal
0024-3841/83/$3.00
0
Elsevier Science Publishers
B.V. (North-Holland)
158
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+ nasal consonant inside the same syllable, thus analysing nasal vowels as phonological closed syllables. For convenience.1 shall refer to this analysis as the ‘VN analysis’. American structuralists have usually preferred a less abstract monophonemic analysis (the ‘v analysis’) (Hall * 1943b : 12; Head 1964). (This is a simplified picture, as there were American proponents of the VN analysis (Trager 1943a, b; Reed and Leite 1947) and European opponents of it (Hammarstrom 1962; Tlaskal 1980) : Vandresen (1975) gives a clear account of the different theoretical assumptions that motivated the choice of analysis by different schools.) Generative phonologists (Saciuk 1970; Brasington 1971; St. Clair 1973 ; Mateus 1975; Brake1 1979) have espoused a variant of the VN analysis, on morphological grounds: to give a common underlying form to related forms such as som ‘sound’ [‘so] and sonor ‘sonorous’ [su’noru] or origem ‘origin’ [o’ri@i] and originar ‘to originate’ [ori$‘nar] one must postulate underlying VN sequences for the nasal vowels of som and origern (Mateus 1975 : 46). This is not the same hypothesis as the VN analysis, since the underlying VN sequences of generative accounts are not always contained in the same syllable, and so nasal vowels are not necessarily closed syllables. For instance, the nasal vowel [q in in& ‘sister’ [ir’ms], is derived from an underlying form /irmana/. I shall argue for an intermediate position. Nasal vowels are indeed made up of two phonological segments, one oral and one nasal, but the second element is a vowel rather than a consonant, and nasal vowels are true diphthongs, and thus open syllables, rather than vowel + consonant sequences and closed syllables. I shall call this analysis the ‘VV analysis’.
To justify this analysis I must -cast my net wider, and consider the oral and nasal falling diphthongs of Portuguese. (The rising diphthongs are not included here, as they are phonetic realisations of bisyllabic vowel sequences (-mara 1953: 75), except for /wa/ which requires a special analysis.) VN analyses are ambivalent about the phonological structure of the falling diphthongs. On the one hand they identify them as vowel + semivowel sequences, justifying the analysis by structural parallels with VC sequences : yet they do ,not explicitly claim that diphthongs are closed syllables, and the arguments used to show nasal vowels to be closed syllables (and thus VC sequences) would show oral diphthongs to be open syllables in two cases and closed syllables in a third (see section 5 for discussion).
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From a phonological point of view there is no room for equivocation. Semivowels are consonants, being defined as vocalic segments in consonantal (non-nuclear) position. A diphthong analysed as vowel + semivowel is by definition a VC sequence, and therefore a closed syllable. The phonological criteria of structure and function which govern such phonological analyses must be kept clearly distinct from the phonetic criteria governing the selection of a phonetic transcription for falling diphthongs: whether we transcribe muu ‘bad’ as [‘maw] or [‘ma_u] is a separate issue from that of whether we analyse it as /maw/ or /ma_u/. In fact, purely phonetic considerations should lead us to transcribe Portuguese falling diphthongs as vowel + vowel complexes. They are complex nuclei with a smooth transition between the two elements, as is indicated by the description given by Lacerda: “a vowel oriented in the direction of as lax [i] or [u]” (Lacerda and Strevens 1956: 15). (For similar descriptions, see Sweet 1884: 207, 234; GuimarZes 1927: 45; Liidtke 1953: 212; Strevens 1954 : 9.) On phonological grounds, too, there must be serious doubts over representing diphthongs as vowel + semivowel. This type of analysis is well motivated only where the semivowels /j/ and /w/ are found as independent phonemes in pre-vocalic contexts, which is clearly not the case in Portuguese. A similar argument could be levelled at the W analysis, since the nasal vocalic segments which it postulates are only found in complex nuclei, and do not correspond to any segment found in other contexts (as opposed to the VN analysis which postulates nasal consonants in syllable-initial and syllable-final position). This argument is not conclusive, however : it is quite possible to analyse nasal consonants and the nasal vocalic element as realisations, in different syllabic contexts, of the same phonological type of [-cons + nas] segment, just as semivowels are variants of vocalic phonemes. For the purposes of the present paper, this extension of the W analysis will not be pursued further. I shall argue that oral diphthongs, nasal monophthongs and nasal diphthongs all have the same basic phonological structure, namely that of a diphthong or complex syllable-nucleus : oral diphthongs. have an oral second segment and nasal monophthongs and diphthongs a nasal second segment. The difference between nasal monophthongs and diphthongs is thus a matter of the quality of the second segment, rather than of the number of segments. The differences between the VN and W analyses are set out in (1).
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(1) Oral diphthong e.g. [aiJ Nasal monophthong e.g. [i] Nasal diphthong e.g. [HJ
/ Portuguese
nasal vowels
VN analysis
W
IVCI (/a$) IVNI (/iNA /VCN/ (/o_iN/)
/WI (/ail) /VT/ (/ii/ or /i j) PSI
analysis
(lo20
3.
There are several phonetic arguments for preferring the VN analysis to the v analysis. They do not, however, give it a similar advantage over the VV analysis. Instrumental phonetic analysis (Lacerda and Head 1966; Lacerda and Strevens 1956; Mateus 1975: 94) shows that the nasality of a nasal monophthong or diphthong is mainly located in the latter portion of the syllablenucleus. It is further noted that the strength of nasality in a preconsonantal nasal vowel is inversely proportional to the prominence of the nasal consonant usually found between the vowel and the consonant. Both these effects follow logically from the VN analysis: the nasality of the vowel is the result of the assimilation into the vowel of the syllable-final nasal consonant of the phonological form, so that it is to be expected that the nasality will occur at the position of the underlying consonant, and that the degree of nasality will depend on the degree to which the consonant is effaced. (The postvocalic nasal consonants are, according to the VN analysis, retained underlying consonants rather than inserted transitions.) But the VV analysis also predicts these effects. The phonological representation /fl/ already has the nasality located in the second portion of the nucleus : any consonantal transition will be a conversion of the second portion of the underlying diphthong into a more consonantal articulation, which will automatically reduce the length of the nasal portion of the nucleus. It should be noted that the presence of nasal consonants between a nasal vowel and a following consonant cannot by itself be taken as evidence for the VN analysis (pace Barbosa 1962 ; Almeida 1976), or any other biphonemic analysis, since such consonants can equally well, if not better, be explained as phonetic transitions (HammarstrGm 1962). They are significant, however, for evaluating generative variants of the VN analysis. Postvocalic nasal consonants are found not only intraverbally but also interverbally, when a word-final nasal vowel is followed by a word-initial consonant, as in in&i bonita ‘pretty sister’ pronounced [ir’mEmbu’nite].
S. Parkinson
J Portuguese
nasal vowels
161
This is an embarassment for any generative account which claims that such consonants are retained underlying consonants, because at no stage in the derivation of irm6 or irmii bonita is there a word-final nasal consonant: the derivation of irma” is:
(2)
/irmana/ Nasalisation
irmlna
N-deletion
irmaa
Contraction
irml
Other
[irImE]
rules
(following
Mateus
1975
: 51)’
So if there is a nasal consonant in irmii bonita, it cannot be the underlying nasal consonant, and must be the result of some process of glide epenthesis. Once you admit a rule of glide epenthesis, you have effectively conceded the argument over whether these nasal consonants are underlying or inserted. In addition, the W analysis is better placed to handle the special relationship between diphthongs and monophthongs in the set of nasal vowels. The diphthong [e?J ([EJ in Lisbon Portuguese) is the realisation of the monophthong /e/ in word-final position, just as many occurrences of [E_ti] are word-final realisations of /G/ (Lipski 1973 : 70 claims that these are not ‘true phonological diphthongs’). If the monophthongs /Z/ and /C/ are already diphthongs in phonological representation, we require only a rule modifying the quality of the second portion of the underlying diphthong rather than a complicated morphophonemic rule of diphthongisation. In some dialects of Portuguese, atonic final nasal vowels have been denasalised and diphthongs monophthongised and denasalised, e.g. o@ ‘orphan’ (fem.) [‘orfn], homem ‘man’ [‘omal] corresponding to standard forms [‘art%], [‘omg]. No dialect, however, shows denasalisation of atonic diphthongs without concurrent monophthongisation. If this is part of the dynamism of the language, as Tlaskal (1980) claims, then the W analysis best represents the dynamic process involved. As the nasality of a nasal diphthong is located in second segment, monophthongisation and denasalisation are the same process, namely deletion of the second segment.
’
For
alternative
239, 386.
analyses
which
avoid
this problem,
see Brake1
1979;
Parkinson
1979-80:
S. Parkinson
162
/ Portuguese
nasal vowels
4. The evidence of syllable-structure suggests that nasal monophthongs, nasal diphthongs and oral diphthongs are of the same type, since they have the same distribution. The possible syllable-final configurations of Portuguese are shown in (3).2 (IS/, /R/ and /L/ represent the classes of. sibilants, vibrants and laterals respectively. All oppositions of quality inside these classes are neutralised in syllable-final position, so that the units occurring in this context are strictly speaking the archiphonemes of these classes.) (3) -0:
oral monophthong oral diphthong nasal mondphthong nasal diphthong _S : oral monophthong oral diphthong nasal monophthong nasal diphthong _R : oral monophthong _L : oral monophthong
esfd [i’jta] ‘it is’ vai [‘vaiJ ‘he goes’ irti [irImE] ‘sister’ tie [‘mEi] ‘mother’ e&s [i’jtaj] ‘you are’ cuis [‘kaiJ] ‘platform’ irm& [ir’m$] ‘sisters’ ma”es [‘miZ_l]‘mothers’ estar [i’jtar] ‘to be’ hotel [o’td] ‘hotel’
Clearly, oral monophthongs form a class on their own, as they are the only type of syllable-nucleus which may be followed by a consonant other than IS/. To account for this, a VN analysis such as Barbosa’s (1965 : 21&I 1) has to distinguish between four classes of syllable-final consonants: the semivowels /jw/ (which I shall informally represent as /cl), the nasal consonants represented by their archiphoneme /N/, the sibilant archiphoneme IS/, and the class of lateral and vibrant archiphonemes /L R/ (which I shall represent as /L/). In terms of these classes, the formula for syllablecodas will be: (4) v{ ;)
(N)
‘“I}
This formula completely conceals the fact that /cl, /N/ and /cN/ all have the same distribution. In the W analysis they are all the same unit, postvocalic /VI : 2 Syllable-final plosives are found in a number of neologisms, e.g. adnato ‘adnate’ [ad’natu]. Such forms are not taken into consideration here, and do not affect the analysis.
S. Parkinson
(5)
W)
/ Portuguese
nasal vowels
163
w
V 1 (L)
i
Considerations of syllable-division also point to the W analysis. In Portuguese, as in most languages, single intervocalic consonants are syllableinitial. Thus sala ‘room’ is [‘sa.ln], with the syllable-boundary (marked by .) falling before the /l/, and terem ‘(for) them to have’ is [‘te.rE]. This principle holds for phrases as well as for single words : word-final consonants, which are syllable-final when the word is pronounced in isolation, become syllable-initial when a vowel follows. Thus the final /l/ of sal ‘salt’ becomes syllable-initial in sal e pimenta ‘salt and pepper’ [Isa. li . pi. mZ. tel. However, as Madonia (1969) pointed out, this process does not affect the last elements of diphthongs or nasal vowels: saia ‘skirt’ is [ ‘[email protected]], t6m ‘they have’ is [‘@I. __ EI] and comeu e bebeu ‘(s)he ate and drank’ is [ku’me_u. i . ba’be_u]. (This shows how wrong Barbosa was to argue for the existence of semivowel phonemes “unites qui ne commutent qu’avec des consonnes” (1965 : 185), on the basis of the supposed parallelism of saia and sala.) When a nasal vowel is followed by another vowel, there is no trace of a syllable-initial consonant : la” azul ‘blue wool’ is [‘El. tz’zul]. (All these facts had been pointed orthography suggested out by Viana (1883: 104), when the unreformed that there might be a nasal consonant in the last example, then spelt Ian azul.) Beside this process of resyllabication, there is a phonetic process of hiatus-breaking which results in the appearance of transitional glides between two vowels in hiatus. The earlier examples tgrn and comeu e bebeu could be pronounced [‘tC%i] and [kume_u%babe_u]. As such glides always occur __ in addition to the vowel, there is no question of treating them as realisations of an underlying segment (CXmara 1953 : 72, 75). Almeida (1976 : 364) falls into this particular trap when he claims that the phrase sim, P ‘yes, it is’ is pronounced [‘si’pc], and that the consonant b] is a resyllabified final nasal consonant : a more accurate transcription of this type of pronunciation is [s&l, the m being the glide regularly found between front vowels in hiatus, as in P, P ‘it is, it is’ pronounced [&I. While /J-I/ is often realised as m (Willis 1967), one cannot assume that every case of F] is a realisation of IpI. Syllable-division, then, is consistent with syllable-structure in indicating that the second elements of diphthongs and nasal vowels are more closely bound to the syllable-nucleus than the clear cases of consonants are.
S. Parkinson
164
/ Portuguese
nasal vowels
5.
We must now reconsider three well-known arguments for the VN analysis, concerning the distribution of spirant variants of voiced plosives, the process of ‘erase’ or interverbal vowel contraction and the distribution of the two vibrant phonemes. 5.1.
Barbosa (1965 : 92-3) claims that the voiced stops /b d g/ appear as the corresponding voiced fricatives [p a r] in intervocalic position and in intervocalic obstruent-resonant clusters, except when the preceding vowel is nasal. Thus we find fricative allophones in mudo ‘dumb’ [‘mubu] and sobra ‘it is too much’ [‘s#re] and stops in mundo ‘world’ [‘madu] and sombra ‘shade’ [‘Gbrrz]. Nasal vowels are thus shown to affect plosives in a way unlike oral vowels: this difference can be explained if nasal vowels are analysed as closed syllables, since fricatives only appear intervocalically and a plosive preceded by a VN sequence would not be intervocalic in phonological representation. The argument is impeccable, but the facts on which it is based are not. Closer examination of the phonetics of the Portuguese voiced plosives shows that Barbosa’s account is oversimplified. Firstly, it is inaccurate to claim that there are only two allophones for each plosive phoneme, a stop and a fricative. There is in fact a whole range of variants for each phoneme, displaying various degrees of weakening of the stop closure. It is not even true that the most common weakened allophone is a fricative. Liidtke (1951 : 354) stresses the difference between this sound-type and the true fricatives of Portuguese: “The basic difference between [v z 31 on the one hand the presence or absence of what Spanish phoneticians that
can
be prolonged”.
Viana similarly indicates “Le
contact
il cesse
and [p 8 y] on the other consists in call rehilamiento, a strong friction
a momentary
se forme
comme
pour
prononcer
immkdiatement
apr&
qu’il
s’est ktabli,
de I’air, lequel s’tchappe avait pas lieu de contact. des plosives
et finissent
articulation
:
b d g .._ seulement et avant
de devenir
ce contact un
obstacle
est t&s kger, au passage
librement, produisant un certain bourdonnement, comme On peut dire de ces trois articulations qu’elles commencent comme
des fricatives”
(Viana
1903a:
19).
s’il n’y comme
S. Parkinson / Portuguese
165
nasal vowels
Strevens (1954 : 24) identifies affricates [bl3 da gy] as alternatives to fricatives, as I was able to confirm by my own observation of pronunciations such aspedacos ‘pieces’ [pa’daasuj]. This is almost certainly the type of articulation which Lacerda and Hammarstrijm (1952 : 132) evasively label as “a type of consonant intermediate between the fricative and the obstruent”. All these descriptions point to a flapped stop articulation3 as defined by Catford (1977: 128): “In flap, one articulating organ approaches another, makes momentary contact and then recedes again”. Secondly, the distribution of strong and weak variants is not as clear-cut as Barbosa claims. Sweet noted that all realisations of the voiced stops were laxly articulated : “b d g are approximate vowels”
pronounced
with
a less energetic
to [p d y] respectively,
(Sweet
and
closure
sometimes
than
in English,
are actually
so that
opened,
they
especially
always between
1884: 210).
and it is his view, rather than Viana’s, which seems to inform the International Phonetic Association’s transcription note: “b d g generally [p ?I y] except initially” (1949: 23). Viana, on the other hand, claimed that the strong and weak variants were in free variation (1903a: 19; 1904). The truth is somewhere between the two positions, as more detailed studies show that while there are contexts which favour plosive weakening and contexts which do not, there are few if any contexts where only one or other type is found .4 Weak plosives are found following all the regular syllable-final consonants : frequently following [3], less frequently [r] and rarely p] (Viana 1883 : 104, 108 ; Lacerda and Hammarstriim 1952 : 128 ; Strevens 1954: 24). Table 1 gives a statistical analysis of the incidence of strong and weak plosives in transcription texts published by Viana (1903a), Guimaraes (1927) and Lacerda and Hammarstriim (1952), and in my own transcription of a passage read by a Lisbon informant. The simple rule of Spirantization (6) implicit in Barbosa’s account
(6) /bdg/+[Pbyl/V.-(C)V 3
Other
oclusivo’ and 4
impressionistic in Ribeiro
5% Nogueira Clearly,
the
terms
(1973:
for the flapped
18), ‘occlusive
: 42)), semi-plosive
(1938 difftculty
in distinguishing
stop include
a articulation and
‘failed
clearly
‘incomplete imparfaite’
plosive’
between
stop’
(Guimarles strong
(‘imperfeitamente
in Barbosa and
(1965:
4243)
1927: 61). weak
plosives
will
contribute to the indeterminacy in their distribution. Its main effect, however, will be to lead to an under-estimation of the distribution of weakened plosives, as flaps and affricates will be identified
as strong
rather
than
weak
plosives.
166
S. Parkinson
/ Portuguese
nasal vowels
1
Table
Incidence
of strong
and
Formal Contexts
weak
voiced
plosives /Informal
style
Guimarges
Viana
s
swsw
w
in sample
Lacerda
texts
styie Parkinsona
Total
SW
s
w
v-v
39
192
30
139
4
12
31
47
104
390
V-R
13
6
1
14
3
0
9
3
26
23
v-c V -##
4
0
1132
23
2
31
5
0
0
0
0
0
1
7
4
7
5
s-v
12
17
3
14
0
2
11
3
26
36
LV
18
7
13
4
0
1
c-v
9
I
9
472
13
2
3
2
1
39
2
38
0
14
3
0
2
150
233
100
# f-V Vc-c Total a
Parkinson
1979-80:
0
1
38
26
2
38
14
2
13
0
41 30
15 4
23
0
114
3
25
2
36
7
165
65
453
502
065 178
-I 16
124.
is inaccurate because it represents a complex phonetic process as a categorial phonological rule. A further indication of the phonetic nature of the process comes from the realisation that the ‘rule’ must be stated in terms of phonetic context, rather than in terms of phonological context. In normal relaxed speech the effacement of unstressed vowels creates consonant clusters not found in formal speech or citation forms: in these clusters, weakened plosives are not found (unless the cluster is one of the normal contexts for weakening). Viana recognised this in his later work (1903a: 37) when he contrasted the slow and fast speech versions of the phrase pede tuub ‘he asks for everything’ : in slow speech [pcbatuau] both cases of /d/ are intervocalic and weakened, while in fast speech [psdtuau] the first /d/ is preconsonantal and is not weakened.5 Messner’s statistics for the frequency of plosive allophones confirm this, showing more weak plosives in citation forms than in conversation (1976: 439-41): (7)
Conversation: Dictionary
’
Viana’s
of God’,
earlier transcribed
:
[b d g]
449 occurrences
[g b r]
381 occurrences
[b d g]
3.105%
[p b v]
4.66%
statements,
and
[e’kazeb’&rJ]
of total
especially (Viana
examples
such
1883: 104) did not
of total
as a casa take
de Deus
this into
‘the
account.
house
S. Parkinson
/ Portuguese
nasal vowels
167
An apparent exception to the priority of phonetic context is found in the frequent occurrence of weakened plosives in word-final and phrase-final position, when the vowel [a] following them in citation forms is effaced (e.g. pede ‘he asks’ pronounced [‘pea]). In this case, however, the plosive is weakened not because it is intervocalic in phonological representation but because it is in an atonic final syllable and thus subject to the very general process of articulatory weakening affecting such syllables: the wellknown reduction of atonic vowels is just one aspect of this weakening of atonic syllables, which can also result in the devoicing of the vowel and the devoicing and/or weakening of the initial consonant of the syllable (Viana 1903b; Strevens 1954: 24-25). The mechanism governing the weakening of voiced plosives is not a phonological rule at all, but a concrete phonetic process, the kind of automatic effect of the interaction of different articulations that Harms (1978) labelled ‘non-rules’. In Portuguese, all voiced stops are articulated laxly, that is with a less energetic closure gesture than their voiceless counterparts. Various aspects of phonetic context - the overall strength of articulation, the nature of adjacent articulations - will tend to reinforce or inhibit the closure, leading to a full plosive (reinforced), a flapped stop or affricate (weak closure) or a fricative or frictionless continuant (no closure). Intervocalic position will inhibit closure, since the tongue or lips will have to move from and return to a quite open position: adjacent consonants, particularly of the same place of articulation, will reinforce the closure as the tongue will not have the same distance to travel.6 (The flap [r] is an exception to this rule: as a flap is by definition a movement to and from a brief closure, so the alveolar closure of [r] will not reinforce the stop in /rd/ or /dr/ sequences as the closure of the [r] cannot be prolonged.) Once we reject the rule of spirantization in its form (6) or in any of the more complex proposals (e.g. Pardal 1977: 185-89), Barbosa’s argument loses much of its force, since the crucial element determining spirantization will be the degree to which the offgliding portion of the nasal vowel 6 This analysis could be interpreted as predicting that in careful speech, where articulations are generally less lax, there would be a tendency to use strong rather than weak plosives even in intervocalic position. In fact, careful speech seems to be subject to a separate rule by which intervocalic /d/ (and to a lesser extent /b/ and /g/) are realised as continuants, often with a greater degree of friction than is found in the weakened plosives of relaxed speech. This is an example of what Line11 (1979 : 5455) calls sharpened pronunciation, involving an exaggeration of certain allophonic distinctions.
168
S. Parkinson
f Portuguese
nasal vowels
assimilates to the consonant: if there is a noticeable transition (a postvocalic consonant) the following consonant articulation will be reinforced, while a weak transition will allow the consonant to be weakened. The frequency of strong plosives is thus no more than the corollary of the frequency of transitions. As the postvocalic nasal consonants are accounted for by all competing theories, the case of spirantization cannot be an argument for the VN analysis. It is interesting to note that the account I have given of spirantization casts doubt on Barbosa’s assertion that weakened plosives never occur after nasal vowels: as weakened plosives can be found after all other VC sequences, it would make nasal vowels an exceptional type of closed syllable. In fact, weakened plosives can be observed after nasal vowels. The sample analysed in table 1 has three such cases, listed below: (8)
cada urn de vds [kS3etC$voj] que se esquecem
depois
quando [kyEnCm]
(Lacerda
and
[kasai]k&ndapo$]
(Guimaraes
1927:
Hammarstrijm (Guimarles
1952: 1927
128)
: 131)
131)
and further examples can be found in other (1927: 151, 153).7
of Guimarges’
transcriptions
5.2. Portuguese has a syntactic phonetic process of vowel contraction, by which the final vowel of a word tends to fuse with the initial vowel of a following word, when there is close transition between them. The classic account of this process was given by Viana (1883) whose high reputation seems to have stifled further research into the topic (with the honourable exceptions of Lacerda and Hammarstrom 1952; Almeida 1976). According to Viana, contraction occurs between identical vowels (i.e. identical vowel phonemes)* so long as the first is not nasal. There is contraction in ca.ra azul ‘blue house’ /kaza azul/ [kazazul] and casa antiga ‘old house’ /kaza atiga/ [kazgtige] but not in 16 azul ‘blue wool’ /la azul/ [I%zul]. Cgmara
‘I It may seem that the presence contradicts
what
Guimarles, like the other any noticeable transition.
phoneticians
* Viana did not make any many early members of the (Barbosa
of a postvocalic
has been said about
1965: 29-44).
In
nasal consonant
the relationship discussed
in GuimarHes’
of transitions
in section
7, undoubtedly
explicit use of a concept resembling IPA he had a clear appreciation of
this
case
he
bracketed
together
the
transcriptions
and consonant
weakening.
uses [n] to indicate
the phoneme, the phonemic
vowels
[a],
[a]
but like principle and
[e].
S. Parkinson
/ Portuguese
nasal vowels
169
(1953) was the first to relate this process to the VN analysis of nasal vowels, observing that the presence of a consonant as final segment of the phonological representation of nasal vowels would effectively prevent contraction with a following vowel, as the phonological representation of the phrase would contain a VN #V sequence (e.g. la azul as /laN azul/) instead of the V#V sequence required for contraction. Once again, the VN analysis rests on an over-simple phonetic statement. CImara did not refer specifically to Viana’s work, claiming that the facts of contraction were common knowledge (1953 : 94); none of those citing Viana’s statements about nasal vowels noticed his equally significant statement that oral diphthongs do not contract with following vowels, which would have led to the conclusion that oral diphthongs were closed syllables. But even Viana’s detailed description needs to be modified in two crucial respects. Firstly, contraction is not an all-or-nothing process, which either happens or does not happen. Various degrees of contraction can be identified. Lacerda and Hammarstrijm identified one intermediate degree of contraction : “at most hearings we had the impression of a single vowel, but at times we decided that it was a case of a repeated vowel” (1952 : 133). My own detailed study (Parkinson 1979-80: ch. 2, sect. 6) identified a scale of degrees of contraction reproduced in (9): (9) Degrees of conrracfion Minimum
Maximum V
V [kazazul]
[kazaJzul]
v_V [kazr?_ezul]
vv
vv
[kazeezul]
[kaze’%zul]
Secondly, the statement that nasal vowels do not contract with following vowels is too categorical. Nasal vowels do not contract with the same frequency or to the same degree as oral vowels in similar contexts, but they do nevertheless undergo contraction. Almeida (1976 : 364) was the first to demonstrate this. Realising that sentence-stress inhibited contraction, he recorded pronunciations of a sentence in which the classic example lZ azul was placed in a phrasal context where it did not attract sentence-stress: esta la’ an.4 t? uma porcaria ‘this blue wool is rubbish’. The phrase 16 azul was pronounced [li?xzul], with contraction.g Similar sentences of my own
9
Almeida’s
broad
original
transcription”
transcription in which
was
postvocalic
[Ii%nzul]. Almeida nasal
consonants
uses what are always
he calls
a “normalizing
included.
S. Parkinson 1 Portuguese
170
nasal vowels
devising, such as 0 homem entrou na estagcio de Santa Apolbnia ‘The man went into St. Apollonia Station’ confirmed the point by eliciting other contractions (in this case of the sequence /E(i) - e/ in homem entrou) which would not have been found if the shorter phrase had been spoken in isolation. The process of contraction is governed by a scale (or rather several interacting scales) of contraction resistance. The basic scale, incorporating the parameters of word-stress and clisis, shows that resistance to contraction is greatest in sequences of stressed vowels, and least in sequences of unstressed vowels of which the second is a clitic: (10)
Scale of conrraction resistance vv_ < vv < irv < vv < ifir (i/ = stressed
vowel, V = unstressed vowel, v = clitic)
This is an implicational scale, indicating that speakers will tend to produce fewer and/or less complete contractions in hiatuses high on the scale than in those lower on the scale. Absolute values of frequency and degree of contraction will vary between idiolects. This account is based on an experiment in which four informants read a list of sentences designed to give a full range of hiatuses. They were recorded and transcribed in terms of the system shown in (9), whose five degrees of contraction were assigned numerical values (maximum = 4, minimum = 0) to give a numerical scale. On this basis, an index of contraction could be calculated for each class of hiatuses. The basic indices of contraction were: (11) vv
irv
vir
irir
3.1
2.1
1.1
0.8
Hiatuses with a clitic as second member had a mean index of 3.375, against an index of 2.625 for hiatuses with atonic non-clitic second members. Other parameters which modify the scale but do not create extra subdivisions of it are the degree of sentence-stress and the nature of the nucleus of the first element in the hiatus: falling diphthongs and nasal vowels as first element show a greater resistance to contraction. Clearly, the fact that contraction is possible between a nasal vowel and a following vowel eliminates Camara’s argument for the VN analysis. The VV analysis, on the other hand, is supported by data from contraction. Firstly, the fact that nasal vowels and diphthongs .resist contraction in the same way is consistent with the hypothesis that they have the same
S. Parkinson
1 Portuguese
nasal vowels
171
(VV) structure. Secondly, the fact that nasal vowels and diphthongs resist contraction can be explained as being a result of their diphthongal structure. The scale of contraction resistance shows that contraction is favoured in sequences of low and falling intensity. A falling diphthong already incorporates a pattern of falling intensity: for a following vowel to contract with a diphthong, this vowel must be of even lower intensity than the last segment of the diphthong, which will only be the case with maximally unstressed vowels. In some cases, the second segment of the diphthong can contract with a following vowel, becoming detached from the first segment in the process, and forming a kind of buffer between the two nuclei. (Strictly speaking, the contraction results in a rising diphthong.) This is found in examples such as meu irtio Humberto ‘my brother Humberto’ /meu irm@ tibertu/ in which the sequence /@ .il/ was pronounced [i?.ti], [me_u.ir .mi?.il. ber. tu]. 5.3. The two vibrant phonemes of European Portuguese, the alveolar flap [r] and the uvular trill [R] (postalveolar [r] in many dialects) are in contrast in intervocalic position but in complementary distribution elsewhere, the trill appearing in the remaining syllable-initial contexts and the flap appearing in syllable-final position and as the second member of a syllable-initial cluster, as shown in (12) : (12) Contrast of [I] - [R] Complementary
‘dear’ [‘karu] carro ‘car’ [‘ka~u] ‘moorish’ [‘mow] morro ‘I die’ [‘IIIORU] rio ‘I’iVer’ [‘RiU] distribution : / #__V palrar [R] /C.-V ‘to chat’ [pot’Rar] tenro ‘tender’ [‘t&u] i /v-v amor ‘love’ [e’mor] /V_# /V_.C carta ‘letter’ [‘karte] cabra ‘goat’ [‘kabre] /.C_V car0 mow0
This is the only clear argument in favour of the VN analysis, If nasal vowels were open syllables, then [r] and [R] should contrast freely following them. The fact that only [R] is found indicates that nasal vowels behave as closed syllables in the conditioning of the distribution of the vibrants (Camara 1953: 93). There is more to the distribution of the vibrants, however. Following an oral diphthong, we find a very limited contrast of vibrants. The flap occurs freely, but the trill is extremely rare: the only
S. Parkinson
172
common example toponyms (e.g. a The evidence of vowels are closed syllable.
is
1 Portuguese
nasal vowels
bairro
‘quarter’ [‘b”Ru], all other examples being or neologisms (e.g. eurritmia lo ‘eurhythmics’). the distribution of vibrants seems to show that nasal syllables and oral diphthongs a special type of open
Bairrada)
6. I have shown that Portuguese nasal vowels function as diphthongs in most aspects of Portuguese phonology, with the exception of the case of the distribution of the vibrant phonemes, where they function as closed syllables. This is an embarrassing inconsistency: how can a sound be at the same time a diphthong and a closed syllable? The solution to this paradox is that while the evidence forces us to recognise that nasal vowels are both diphthong and closed syllable, nothing forces us to conclude that they are diphthong and closed syllable simultaneously, or at the same level of structure. If we admit more than one level of phonological and phonetic processes, it is logically possible for a segment to have different phonological representations at successive levels. Nasal vowels can be VN sequences for the stating of deep regularities, such as the distribution of vibrants and the morphophonemic correspondences highlighted by generative analyses; at a less abstract level where regularities of syllable-structure and phonetic processes are stated, they will be diphthongs. It might be objected that the distribution of the vibrants is not a deep regularity, but a surface one: [r] and [R] are similar enough to be realisations of a single archiphoneme //R// in the positions in which their contrast is neutralised. The rule for the distribution of the vibrants would thus be a realisation rule, of the same abstractness as other allophonic rules. This is too simple a view. Firstly, the rule by which //R// is realised is not the only rule to be considered: we must also state the process by which the opposition is neutralised, in other words the statement of the distribution of//R//, a deeper regularity for which nasal vowels still function as closed syllables. Secondly, comparison of Brazilian and European Portuguese shows superficial differences which would be exaggerated if the lo
Example from Barbosa (1965
making
the /r/ word-initial.
in neologisms.
: 177). This word could reasonably
See fn. 2 for another
example
be analysed
of atypical
as /eu #ritmia/,
phonotactic
structures
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173
distribution of vibrants were taken as a surface regularity. In Brazilian Portuguese, there is no uvular trill but a fricative /x/ with a wide range of realisations including [xl, [xl, [K] and [h] (Brake1 1974). There is no rule of distribution of vibrants, as there is only one vibrant, [r]. Yet [r] and [x] are in complementary distribution in the same contexts as the European vibrants, and even if they cannot be members of an archiphoneme they are related by a morphophonemic rule, since they alternate inside inflectional paradigms, for instance in the singular and plural forms of amor ‘love’ : (13)
amor (sg.) [a’mox]
amores
(PI.) [a’morij]
(Note that the distribution of /x/ is wider than that of European [Rf, as lx/ appears in syllable-final contexts occupied by [r] in European Portuguese : this does not alter the fact that the European and Brazilian systems have the same context of neutralisation.) In Brazilian Portuguese, the rule specifying the distribution of [r] and [x] will be a deep phonological or morphophonemic one: the differences between European and Brazilian Portuguese are of the nature of the surface phonological units rather than of the process relating them, so, in the absence of conclusive evidence for the European rule as a surface phonetic rule, we can assign both rules the same position in the phonology. This analysis shows the need to recognise several levels of phonological structure. It should not be taken as supporting generative phonology over classical phonemics. As soon as a Praguean phonological analysis is formalised, it becomes clear that we require at least three levels of structure: the archiphonemic (at which redundancies are stated), the phonemic and the phonetic. We need to distinguish between ‘extrinsic’ allophonic rules (Ladefoged 1965) which state the range of target articulations for a phoneme, and ‘intrinsic’ allophonic statements (‘non-rules’) which explain how concrete articulations are conditioned.
7. Having justified the general principle of the W analysis, we can discuss the more specific issue of the characterisation of the diphthong which underlies nasal monophthongs. The second segment of this diphthong will have no intrinsic vowel quality, since it is realised either as a nasalised continu-
174
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ation of the first segment or as a glide from it to the following segment. It must thus be characterised as a nasalised vocalic segment unmarked for vowel quality. This analysis, or its embryo, is by no means new. It was first proposed by Louro (1954) who claimed that nasal vowels ended in a nasal schwa @] more or less completely assimilated to adjacent sounds: L‘
in medial or phrase-internal position (they) are usually linked to the next sound by a [;i] which forms a kind of subtle falling diphthong with them and may even replace their final part. It is the vibrations of this G] in instrumental records which lead to the belief that there are genuine syllable-final nasal consonants in Portuguese. . . There is no doubt that, especially when the nasal vowel is followed by a labial consonant, there may appear the phonetic and articulatory equivalent of a nasal consonant [ml. But this [m] is unconscious and passive, resulting simply from that p;] and the closure of the mouth for the pronunciation of the following Jabial” (Louro 1954: 242). .
Barbosa (1965 : 85) criticised this account very unsympathetically, casting doubt on the concept of ‘passive’ articulations (which are of course none other than glides or transitional articulations, a perfectly well-defined phonetic category) and contesting the very existence of Louro’s nasal schwa. There is no doubt, however, that nasal vowels frequently do incorporate an off-glide to or through F] as one of the range of possible transitions.
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Table 2 shows the results of a systematic study of nasal vowel-consonant transitions for one representative speaker. The case of the elusive postvocalic nasal transitions is in fact a subtle example of the subjective nature of phonetic observation. For nearly a century, phoneticians have approached their subject-matter under the influence of the question of whether or not there were postvocalic nasal consonants in Portuguese. Those phoneticians who detected postvocalic nasal segments (Viana 1892, 1903a ; Nobiling 1903 ; GuimarZes 1927 ; Strevens 1954; Head 1964; Almeida 1976) represented them as consonants because that is all they expected to find. When the data are approached with a narrower transcription system and a broader range of options in mind, non-consonantal transitions are easily observable. The speech-sample tabulated in table 2, for instance, includes pronunciations such as tinto _ ‘red (wine)’ [‘ti?u] and rim frio ‘cold kidney’ [‘Ria’friu] : these would very probably have been transcribed [‘tintu] and [‘Rim’friu] by Almeida and others. Louro’s analysis cannot be incorporated into the VV analysis as it stands, because [a] is not a phoneme of European Portuguese (Camara 1953: 84; Mateus 1975: 25) and is not found at all in Brazilian Portuguese. A more satisfactory version is possible inside the theoretical framework provided by Lass (1976: ch. 6). According to Lass, the distinctive features of a phonological system are not an unordered set, but fall into several blocks or submatrices, of which the most important is the oral submatrix or set of features relating to oral cavity articulations. Lass argues that beside conventional archiphonemes (segments unspecified for one or more features) we need to allow for segments which are unspecified for whole submatrices super-archiphonemes involving the neutralisation of all the features of a given set. In the case of the oral submatrix, these are segments unspecified for all ,vowel-quality and place of articulation features: a ‘neutralisation vowel’, a ‘neutralisation stop’ and so on. English has [a] as neutralisation vowel and [?] as neutralisation stop: other languages have [h] as neutralisation fricative. The second element of the nasal diphthong underlying nasal monophthongs in Portuguese is precisely this type of segment - a vowel lacking in intrinsic vowel-quality specifications.
References Almeida, A. de, 1976. Portuguese Radefeld (1976), 349-396.
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vowels:
Phonetics
and
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In:
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