Paulo Chagas de Souza

DL-FFLCH-USP
pcsouza@usp.br
Brazilian Portuguese (BP)

BP stands apart from most Romance languages in
several points. In phonology, epenthesis of an [i].

Examples with consonant clusters: tcnico, digno,
gnomo, pneu, optar, afta and psiclogo.

Words with non-sibilant obstruents as their final
segments. E.g.: dficit, supervit e hbitat.

Epenthesis and Stress
crosslinguistically
Alderete (1999):
Swahili:
jko kitchen jikni in the kitchen
tket ~ tikti ticket
rtli ~ ratli pound

Dakota:

h
ikt I kill you maykte you kill me
ka stagger kha lazy

Epenthesis and Stress

Primary stress can only be affected by epenthesis in BP
if epenthetic vowel occurs between the stress and the
final edge of the word (3-syllable window).

Examples: p[i]siclogo vs. tc[i]nico.

Unnoticed so far: epenthetic vowel has distinct effects
on the prosody of different word classes.

Epenthesis and stress in non-verbs

Stress in non-verbs unaffected by epenthesis.

digno ['digino]
tcnico ['tckiniko]
dficit ['dcfisitj].



violate 3-syllable window
Epenthesis and stress in verbs


Unlike other word classes, verbs may have their
stress affected by epenthesis.

impregna pronounced [i 'prcginn] or [ipre'ginn]

se indigna pronounced [si 'diginn] or [sidi'ginn]
Epenthesis and secondary stress

crosslinguistically common avoidance of stressing
epenthetic vowels found in non-verbs does not
carry over to secondary stress.

nouns like psiclogo may be pronounced with
secondary stress on the epenthetic vowel:
[pisi'k5logo]


Noun paradigms

Nouns rarely have stress shifts.
casa casas, livro livros, cidade cidades
mrtir mrtires, rptil rpteis
lpis lpis, nibus nibus
Possible only for proparoxytones in -r:
jnior juniores jniors
carter caracteres caractere
Jpiter - Jupteres? Jpiters?

Verbal paradigms

Extense paradigms: several tenses (present, perfect,
imperfect, future, future of the preterite), two moods,
tenseless forms.
As few as one suffix. Ex.: com.pr-a.
Up to 4 suffixes. Ex.: compr-a-r-a-mos.

All verbs include stress shift in their paradigms:
com.pra com.pra.va com.pra.ri.a.

Verbal vs. non-verbal paradigms

com.pra l.gi.co

com.pra.va l.gi.ca

com.pra.ri.a. l.gi.cas

Bibliography

Alderete, John (1999). Head-Dependence in Stress-
Epenthesis Interaction. ROA-453.
Bybee, Joan (2001). Phonology and Language Use.
Cambridge University Press.