Fonetica e fonologia

Vozeamento de obstruintes: um estudo com surdos e ouvintes
(Voicing of obstruents: a study of deaf and hearing) Rosana Passos1, Thaïs Cristófaro Silva2
1, 2

Faculdade de Letras – Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) 2 CNPq, FAPEMIG [e-mail], [e-mail]

Abstract: This paper analyses voice properties in obstruents in Brazilian Portuguese, and considers the oral production of severe deaf speakers who use the Brazilian Sign Language. Five experiments were carried out with six deaf participants and one experiment with six hearing participants. The acoustic analysis showed that deaf speakers produce only voiceless obstruents at the beginning of words, regardless of whether the voice property of the word initial obstruent was voiced or voiceless. The notion of covert contrast was taken into consideration to posit the hypothesis that a vowel which follows a voiced obstruent would be longer than a vowel which follows a voiceless obstruent. This hypothesis was proven to be correct offering, thus, evidence that covert contrast operates in a deaf person’s speech and enables the subject to discriminate between voiceless and voiced obstruents. Keywords: Usage-based Phonology; deafness; voicing; obstruents; covert contrast; acoustic phonetics. Resumo: Este artigo analisa as propriedades de vozeamento e desvozeamento das consoantes obstruintes do português brasileiro, em participantes surdos profundos pré-linguais usuários de Língua Brasileira de Sinais (Libras). Foram realizados cinco experimentos com seis surdos e um experimento com seis ouvintes do grupo controle. A análise acústica dos dados revelou que os surdos desvozeiam todas as consoantes obstruintes em início de palavra, sejam elas em português vozeadas ou desvozeadas. A noção de contraste encoberto levou à formulação da hipótese de que a vogal que segue a consoante obstruinte vozeada é mais longa do que a vogal que segue a consoante obstruinte desvozeada. Tal hipótese foi