Intervocalic glides in Brazilian Portuguese: a case of multiple underlying representations?

• Autor(a) principal: Eberle, Lucas Pereira
• Data de Publicação: 2025
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Caderno de Squibs
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/cs/article/view/57027
• topic: glides epentéticos; silabificação; múltiplas representações subjacentes; português brasileiro; morfofonologia; epenthetic glides; syllabification; multiple underlying representations; Brazilian Portuguese; morphophonology

Glides can occur between morphological boundaries within words in Brazilian Portuguese, as in [‘fRejʊ] ‘brake’ (categorical) and [pe’sowɐ]~ [pe’soɐ] ‘person’ (variable). This study experimentally investigated the syllabic position of the epenthesis to discover whether the insertion is motivated by Onset (insertion in the second vowel) or prominence augmentation (first vowel). A Syllable Reversal Task revealed that glides with variable insertion were more often associated with the first vowel. It was concluded that glides are primarily associated with the first syllable and can later be syllabified to the second one, while glides with variable insertion are purely epenthetic. Moreover, it was argued that this phenomenon is a case of a competition of multiple underlying representations.