ABSTRACT
According to the Contrastive Hierarchy Theory (DRESHER, 2003DRESHER, Elan. 2003. Contrast and asymmetries in inventories. In: Anna-Maria di Sciullo (ed.) Asymmetry in grammar, Volume 2: Morphology, phonology, acquisition, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, p. 239-306.; 2009______. 2009. The Contrastive Hierarchy in Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.), the lexical representation of segments should be hierarchically arranged based on phonological contrasts and processes that affect a language’s phonemes. Based on this theory, (Lee, 2008LEE, Seung-Hwa. 2008. Contrate das Vogais no PB. Portuguese-Brazilian Studies, v. 5, p. 201-221.) proposes that the vowels of Brazilian Portuguese be represented using the following hierarchy of features: [low] > [back] > [high] > [ATR]. However, this hierarchy does not account for the vowel elision process as it occurs in the paulista dialect: in this dialect, the final post-tonic /a/ and [u] vowels are affected by elision (cf. NOGUEIRA, 2007NOGUEIRA, Milca Veloso. 1990. Aspectos segmentais no processo de sândi externo no falar de São Paulo. São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo. Dissertação de Mestrado, 2007. and SANTOS, 2007SANTOS, Raquel Santana. 2007. A aquisição prosódica do português brasileiro de 1 a 3 anos: padrões de palavra e processos de sândi externo. São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo. Tese de pós-doutorado.). Hence, the present article puts forth a lexical representation for these vowels in which they are grouped under the same phonological contrast, explaining the fact that they are target of the same phonological process in the paulista dialect.
Key-words:
lexical representation; back vowels; phonological processes; contrastive hierarchy of features
