Real-Time Study Of The Falling Diphthong /ej/ Monophthongization In Sample From Porto Alegre

Abstract

In Brazilian Portuguese oral falling diphthongs, the glides [j] and [w] may be deleted according to a variable rule, as in peixe~ pexe, caixa~caxa and ouro~oro. In our study, we proceed to the real-time analysis of the switching variable [ej] and [e] in the speech community of Porto Alegre, RS. We select a sample of 14 informants in the city of Porto Alegre (RS), from the NURC Project database, interviewed in the 1970s and recontacted in the late 1990 by VARSUL Project, thus totalizing 28 interviews. We proceed to the collection and coding of 1.791 data. The coded data were submitted to statistical analysis program GoldVarb 3.0. In order to observe the behavior of the variable in terms of stability or change in progress (LABOV, 1994), our real-time analysis of the results identified the monophthongization of [ej] as a stable phenomenon of variation.