Work

Prosodic generalizations in the Brazilian Portuguese diphthongal plural

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: The diphthongal plural in Brazilian Portuguese is sensitive to three phonological factors: monosyllabicity, licensing of nasal diphthongs by stress, and vertical dispersion of oral diphthongs. We present an analysis that captures the gradient distribution of the Brazilian Portuguese plurals ending in diphthongs, both oral and nasal, using a probabilistic grammar based on the well-understood factors mentioned above. This grammar is trained on corpus data and is sensitive to prosodic generalizations; it correctly derives existing plurals while accurately generalizing beyond individual lexical items and predicting participants’ choices in nonce word tasks. The results are incompatible with analyses that apply uniformly to all lexical items, as well as with those that simply memorize semipredictable plurals without incorporating phonologically-based generalizations.

Source: UCL Discovery (University College London)

Authors: Becker, Michael, Nevins, Andrew, Sandalo, Filomena, Rizzato, Érick

Institutions: University of Massachusetts Amherst, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, University College London, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP)

Language: English

Topic: Phonetics and Phonology Research

Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

OpenAlex ID: W7075661228

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