Acerca dos diferentes graus de distinção em fonologia: o caso dos fonemas portugueses em dissílabos do tipo CVCV

Abstract

The concept phoneme, from point of view of the Structuralism, is defined as the smallest segmental unit of a language which is apprehensible by means of contrasts of minimum pairs. Nonetheless, the number of products in each opposition is very dissimilar. The differences of the distinguishing function are analyzed in this paper by means of the set of all Portuguese words from the Houaiss dictionary which has the CVCV structure. The effect of the inclusion of inflected forms, as well as of words with a low use frequency is also considered. Other perspectives of analysis are possible for the question of the phonological distinction, beyond the traditional ones.