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From Reduction to Apocope: Final Poststressed Vowel Devoicing in Brazilian Portuguese

2015; Karger Publishers; Volume: 72; Issue: 2-3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1159/000439599

1423-0321

Francisco de Oliveira Meneses, Eleonora Cavalcante Albano,

Speech Recognition and Synthesis

Abstract This is a study of final poststressed vowel devoicing following /s/ in Brazilian Portuguese. We contradict the literature describing it as deletion by arguing, first, that the vowel is not deleted, but overlapped and devoiced by the /s/, and, second, that gradient reduction with devoicing may lead to apocope diachronically. The following results support our view: (1) partially devoiced vowels are centralized; (2) centralization is inversely proportional to duration; (3) total devoicing is accompanied by lowering of the /s/ centroid; (4) the /s/ noise seems to be lengthened when the vowel is totally devoiced; (5) aerodynamic tests reveal that lengthened /s/ has a final vowel-like portion, too short to be voiced; (6) lengthened /s/ favors vowel recovery in perceptual tests. This seems to be a likely path from reduction to devoicing to listener-based apocope.