Patterns of progression of sound changes in a variety of Portuguese in contact with Italian immigration languages in Southern Brazil

Abstract

The study deals with variable phonetic traits of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) in contact with Italian immigration languages. It focuses on the realization of an alveolar tap (weak-r) in onset position where one would expect an alveolar trill (strong-r) or its fricative variants (glottal/velar fricative): [ɾ]ápido instead of [r]ápido or [h]ápido ‘fast’, ca[ɾ]o instead of ca[r]o or ca[h]o ‘car’. The realization is relatively stigmatized and declining in younger generations (Azeredo, 2012; Frosi, Faggion & Dal Corno, 2017). The study uses methods from variationist sociolinguistics (Labov, 1972; Labov, 1994; Labov, 2001; Labov, 2010) to examine speech data of a southern Brazilian town, Flores da Cunha, founded by Italian immigrants in the late 19th century. The objective of the study is to identify the linguistic and social factors correlated to the realization of a weak-r and thus to elucidate the pattern of variation and change. Logistic regression performed with R (Venables, Smith & the R Core Team, 2022) in a real-time trend study with data from 1990 (VARSUL sample) and 2008–2009 (BDSer sample) shows that the process is relatively stable in the speech community and conforms to a pattern of generational change (Labov, 1994). Despite the tendency towards leveling of Flores da Cunha BP with supralocal patterns of Portuguese, the slow decline in the realization of weak-r suggests that the socioindexical value of the alveolar tap has changed in recent years, along with socioeconomic and cultural changes.