| Summary: |
The main purpose of this project is the critical deepening of a most debated issue among the phonologists who taken Portuguese as their field of study: the importance of syllable weight. We will not discuss whether Portuguese is a quantity-sensitive or insensitive language, since it is assumed that weight does play a role as far as stress assignment is concerned. Our central questions are as follows: 1. What are the phonetic and phonologicl correlates of syllable weight in Portuguese? 2. How are such correlates represented and processed by the speakers' phonological knowledge? 3. What is the relation between syllable weight and vowel aperture in Portuguese?
Research will be oriented towards two main dimensions: 1. The exhaustive identification of all correlates of syllable weight, with a special focus on vowel sonority; 2. The representation of syllable weight in the phonological knowledge of native speakers of European Portuguese. For the study of the latter question in particular, our work will not be limited to formal analysis of linguistic data. It comprehends an important part of phonetic and psycholinguistic experimentation for the observation of speakers' linguistic intuitions and behavior regarding syllable weight and its correlates in Portuguese. |