Abstract
In this article, we formalize the acquisition of word-mid /pt/ and /kt/ sequences in English (L2) by learners from Southern Brazil. The participants, who presented a basic proficiency level in English, had their productions recorded both in English and in Brazilian Portuguese, which allowed for an analysis of the acoustic patterns found in the production of /p/ and /k/ obstruent codas. The acoustic patterns produced by the learners were analyzed using the Stochastic-Optimality Theory, and the constraints used in the analysis were based on the framework of Gestural Phonology (BROWMAN & GOLDSTEIN, 1992) and in the gestural landmarks proposed by Gafos (2002). We conclude that a gestural analysis allows for the formalization of a wider range of acoustic patterns which tended not to be considered in traditional accounts of phonology, as these patterns assume a different status since they are then considered to be part of the grammar.
Highlights
In this article, we aim to formalize the acquisition of word-mid /p/ and /k/ codas in English by Southern Brazilian learners
We will describe the acoustic patterns produced by the learners and their relative frequencies of occurrence, which are to be reproduced by the Gradual Learning Algorithm (GLA)
We investigated the production of heterosyllabic /pt/ and /kt/ sequences in Brazilian Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese-English interlanguage
Summary
We aim to formalize the acquisition of word-mid /p/ and /k/ codas in English by Southern Brazilian learners. In some dialects of Brazilian Portuguese, the coda obstruent may surface variably (Coda Condition Weakening, BISOL, 1999), which may occur due to either intra-speaker or inter-dialectal variation. As we consider the ‘gaúcho’ dialect of Brazilian Portuguese (spoken in the state of Rio Grande do Sul), the /p/ and /k/ in word-mid codas may surface either as the coda of the syllable or as the onset of a new syllable, by means of inserting an epenthetic vowel and the consequential resyllabification of the stop segment: “rapto” – [xa.pi.tu]~[xap.tu] (LUCENA & ALVES, 2010). As the stop consonant may emerge variably in this dialect, this might cause phonetic-phonological transfer from Brazilian Portuguese (L1) to English (L2). In this sense, many of the phonetic patterns which occur variably in the learners’ L1 may be found in their productions of English (L2)
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