A síncope na redução variável de proparoxítonas e paroxítonas terminadas em ditongo crescente no português de falantes analfabetos e de baixa escolarização da região de Mostardas/RS e Tavares/RS

Abstract

This study aimed to describe, analyse and formalize the linguistic behavior of Brazilian Portuguese speakers on marked stressed syllable words, which can be found in two different cases: in proparoxytone words (e.g.: “médico”) and also in paroxytone ended in rising diphthongs (e.g.: “pátio”). According to the Sociolinguistics approach, this study focused on how illiterate and low educated participants from Mostardas (RS) and Tavares (RS) considered the variable marked stress. Data were analysed based on Metrical Phonology (HALLE & VERGNAUD, 1987; BISOL, 1992) and Variationist Sociolinguistics (LABOV, 1972,1994). The corpus was constituted of linguistic data of 12 (twelve) participants – 6 illiterate and 6 with low education level. Data was collected in Sociolinguistic individual interviews and also with a specific data collection instrument, considering the main objective of this study: proparoxytone words ended in “i_o” and “i_a”, with intervenient consonants like /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/ (e.g.: “crédito, ácido, dívida, crítico, África, código”); paroxytone words ended in “io” and “ia”, preceded by /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/ (e.g.: “olímpio, cópia, lábio, tíbia, pátio, hóstia, médio, colóquio, relíquia”). These contexts were chosen in order to balance the phonetic-phonological environment, as well as existent words in the language. Data were transcribed, organized and finally statistically treated on SPSS software, considering and controlling linguistics and extralinguistic variables. Results indicated significative difference between the compared groups (illiterate versus low educated participants). It is relevant to mention that illiterate participants performed phonological processes when producing marked stressed syllable words. Among the phonological phenomena performed found in this study, two of them were considered statistically significant: (a) elision, occurring in the last syllable of words, in proparoxytone (“crédito”  “crédi”); (b) elision, occurring on the second vowel in paroxytones ended in rising diphthongs (“pátio”  “páti”), therefore being considered a characteristic from the analysed region. Data indicated syncope was a specific process which disrupts the marked stress, found in proparoxytones and in paroxytones ended in rising diphthongs. The processes performed by the Illiterate Participantes were formalysed under the light of the Metrical Theory, according to Bisol (1992) proposal for the attribution of primary stress given to nouns in Portuguese. This formalization allowed the emergence and also representation of the genuine primary stressed syllable. It also made clear that segments and/or syllables that were main target of these processes occupied non-proeminent syllable position: either the weak edge of the primary stress feet of the word or syllable was considered to be extrametrical from the word in its underlying representation. Through formalization, it was possible to conclude that proparoxytone words and paroxytones ending in rising diphthong were targets, for these speakers, on a single syncope process: the underlying extrametrical syllable. This result supports the idea that paroxytone words ending in rising diphthong are proparoxytone in the underlying representation.