Restructuring of obstruent-liquid clusters

Abstract

In Portuguese, CCV syllables form obstruent-liquid clusters and can be optionally restructured by (1) inserting a vowel between the onset consonants, resulting in CV.CV, or (2) deleting the liquid consonant in the second position, resulting in CV, cases that were evaluated separately in previous studies. This study presents an integrated evaluation of the CCV~CV.CV~CV alternation in Brazilian Portuguese, based on acoustic analysis of CCV occurrences in spontaneous speech recordings from 22 native speakers. We sought to determine the role of linguistic factors, such as the position of the accent, as well as evaluate the quality of the epenthetic vowel and duration patterns resulting from consonant loss or vowel insertion. In terms of its quality, the supporting vowel is a centralized vowel, and there may be harmony with the following vowel. It was found that the CV pattern is more frequent in a non-accented context and leads to vowel lengthening, while the CV.CV pattern is more frequent in an accented context. The results are discussed in terms of the gradualness and dynamicity of the phenomenon and considering phonological principles of syllabic restructuring and onset formation.