A lateral pós-vocálica em Francisco Beltrão - PR

Abstract

The main theme of this study is the realization of the post-vocalic lateral in the municipality of Francisco Beltrão, located in the southwest region of Paraná (PR). In Brazilian Portuguese, the lateral can manifest itself in a variety of ways in the syllable coda position, including: alveolar [l], velar [ɫ], voiced [w], deletion [Ø] and rotated /r/ - realized as a tepe [ɾ] or retroflex [ɻ]. When looking at previous research, there were higher rates of production of the voiced form in much of Brazil; however, in the southern region there is still a tendency for the alveolar form to be preserved (Pinho; Margotti, 2010; Machry da Silva; Borghelott; de Andrade, 2020). Thus, this research aims to investigate the behavior of the post-vocalic lateral in Francisco Beltrão/PR, observing whether there is a tendency in this municipality to maintain the realization of the alveolar lateral, as well as the advance of the vocalization variant and the occurrence of other variant forms such as rotacism, velarization and deletion. With this in mind, and based on previous studies on the phenomenon under investigation (Collischonn; Quednau, 2007; Pinho; Margotti, 2010; Machry da Silva; Borghelott; de Andrade, 2020; Hahn; Quednau, 2007; Nedel, 2009), the research deals with the use of variant forms for the post-vocalic /l/, more specifically looking at the extent to which the preservation of the lateral is maintained in the locality and what linguistic and historical-social factors contribute to this. To this end, this study is based on the Theory of Variation or Quantitative Sociolinguistics (Labov, 1972; 2008 The corpus of this research was made up of speech samples from 14 informants, all of whom were natives or residents of the municipality, aged between 18 and 80, eight of whom were female and six male. For data collection, instruments were used, organized into three moments: (i) naming and describing images; (ii) producing sentences and (iii) informal conversation on various topics. As far as the results are concerned, there was a predominance of the use of the alveolar /l/ (74.4%). However, the use of the variants vocalization [w] (19.8%), velarization [ɫ] (1.6%) and rotacism [r] (4.1%) were also identified, albeit to a lesser extent, and these variables are associated with more specific groups.