Acoustics of epenthetic vowels in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

In this production study involving a task of real words and a task of nonce words, epenthesis in obstruent-obstruent clusters in Brazilian Portuguese was investigated and the acoustic properties of epenthetic and lexical [i] were compared. A number of linguistic factors were found to be significant predictors of the epenthesis rate: voicing of the consonants of the cluster, manner of articulation of the second consonant, place of articulation of both consonants, and position of the cluster with respect to the stressed syllable. Moreover, there was a higher epenthesis rate for nonce words than for real words. As for the quality of the epenthetic vowel, it was found to have the same F1 as the lexical [i] in the language, but it was significantly shorter in duration, and it had a significantly lower F2 in the nonce words, but not in the real words. Finally, we found a relatively high rate of deletion of lexical [i], conditioned by the same factors that conditioned epenthesis rate, but in the opposite direction. It is concluded that epenthesis is a phonological phenomenon in Brazilian Portuguese, but that there is also acoustic reduction in the language that affects both lexical and epenthetic vowels.