WHERE DO THE VOWELS FALL? VOCALIC SUPRESSION, VOCALIC STRESS AND PROSODIC STRESS IN THE AMPER-POR CORPUS

Abstract

During the research for geoprosodic cartography works, in the context of the AMPER project, the study of the informants' productions confirmed the elision of many unstressed vowels. Based on the productions of 24 informants from 6 regions of Mainland Portugal, we identified situations of vowel suppression in 56 declarative and interrogative syntactic structures. The results show a tendency for post-tonic vowels suppression in proparoxytone words. Some phonetic contexts seem to favor the fall of paroxytones’ pre-tonic vowels. Vowels elision occurs more frequently at the end of the structure which may be related to duration, in prosodic terms.