Portuguese rhotic variation in the Brazilian cities of Salvador and São Paulo

Abstract

Brazilian Portuguese has two rhotic phonemes: the alveolar flap /ɾ/ and the historically long version which previous publications call velar, uvular, or glottal fricatives, or alveolar trills and approximants. This variation occurs both within and across dialects. Deletion is also common, most notably in word-final position. For the current project, thirty-five participants from Salvador and ten participants from São Paulo were recorded reading predetermined stimuli of isolated words and sentences, creating 6,383 instances of the rhotic phoneme. Productions were classified as exhibiting deletion or for having voicing, frication, flapping, and place characteristics. The results indicate a range of surface forms of the phoneme more variable than previously cited, with palatal fricatives common in Salvador and several flap + fricative variants common in São Paulo, along with other less frequent forms. In Salvador, glottal fricatives predominate across the board with much higher rates of deletion. In São Paulo, glottal fricatives predominate in onset positions, but alveolar trills and approximants and flap + fricative variants predominate in coda position. While deletion is most common word-finally, it occurs in all environments where the phoneme is found.