Gradience in prosodic representation: vowel reduction and neoclassical elements in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

In Brazilian Portuguese, neoclassical elements (NCEs) may combine with both independent lexical words (e.g., psico in psicolinguística ‘psycholinguistics’) and non-lexical words (e.g., psico in psicologia ‘psychology’). This has led to the proposal that they have distinct prosodic representations depending on the type of structure that they form: NCE+Indep(endent lexical word) prosodizes recursively in the PWd, whereas NCE+Dep(endent form) prosodizes as a simple PWd. However, both NCE+Indep and NCE+Dep are subject to vowel reduction processes that yield similar surface forms: the NCE in NCE+Indep is targeted by word-final raising, and the NCE in NCE+Dep is targeted by raising in pretonic position. This similarity in surface forms poses a problem for the proposal of separate prosodic representations, as different forms of prosodization imply different phonological behavior. We analyze native speakers’ judgements and productions with respect to reduction of the NCE-final vowel under the hypothesis that, if these NCE structures are prosodized differently and undergo different processes, the process that is more frequent in the Brazilian Portuguese grammar (word-final raising) should have higher acceptance and production rates. Results confirm our hypothesis. We argue that the gradient application of phonological processes reflects prosodic distinctions that cannot be captured in a framework that only considers the application or non-application of said processes.