Portuguese phonology

Portuguese phonology

The phonology of Portuguese can vary considerably between dialects, in extreme cases leading to difficulties in intelligibility. This article focuses on the pronunciations that are generally regarded as standard. Since Portuguese is a pluricentric language, and differences between European Portuguese (EP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP) can be considerable, both varieties are distinguished whenever necessary.

For finer information on regional accents, see Portuguese dialects, and for historical sound changes see History of Portuguese.

Consonants

Overview

The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates IPA|/ts/, IPA|/dz/, IPA|/tʃ/, IPA|/dʒ/ merged with the fricatives IPA|/s/, IPA|/z/, IPA|/ʃ/, IPA|/ʒ/, respectively, but not with each other, and there were no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, several consonant phonemes have special allophones at syllable boundaries, and a few also undergo allophonic changes at word boundaries. In the following, the phrase "at the end of a syllable" can be understood as "before a consonant, or at the end of a word".

The characteristic pronunciation of IPA|/l/ as IPA| [u̯] at the end of syllables in Brazilian Portuguese has created new diphthongs: IPA| [ou̯] ("polvo", "octopus"), IPA| [ɔu̯] ("sol", "sun"), IPA| [uu̯] ("sul", "south"), although this semivowel [u̯] is best analysed as an allophone of the consonant IPA|/l/.

Nasal vowels

Portuguese also has a series of nasalized vowels. Harvcoltxt|Cruz-Ferreira|1995 analyzes European Portuguese with five monophthongs and four diphthongs, all phonemic: IPA|/ĩ ẽ ɐ̃ õ ũ ɐ̃ĩ õĩ ũĩ ɐ̃ũ/. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the end of words (or followed by a final sibilant), and in a few compounds. Brazilian Portuguese is considerably more nasal than European Portuguese possibly due to the influence of other languages, such as Tupi.Fact|date=February 2008

Harvcoltxt|Barbosa|Albano|2004 analyze the nasalized monophthongs of Brazilian Portuguese as phonetically nasalized before an archiphoneme IPA|/N/ or a heterosyllabic nasal consonant. Nasalized diphthongs in Brazilian Portuguese, are formed by combining IPA| [ẽ] , IPA| [ɐ̃] , IPA| [õ] , or IPA| [ũ] with the offglide IPA| [ɪ̯̃] (except withIPA|/ɐ̃ʊ̃/). [Harvcoltxt|Barbosa|Albano|2004|p=230]

The nasal diphthong IPA| [ũĩ] is found only in the six words "ruim" (in some dialects, though this pronunciation is nonstandard), "muito", "muita", "muitos", "muitas", and "mui".Fact|date=February 2008

Vowel alternation

The stressed low vowels IPA|/a, ɛ, ɔ/ contrast with the stressed high vowels IPA|/ɐ, e, o/ in several kinds of grammatically meaningful alternation:

* Between the base form of a noun or adjective and its inflected forms: "ovo" IPA|/o/ "egg", "ovos" IPA|/ɔ/ "eggs"; "novo" IPA|/o/, "nova" IPA|/ɔ/, "novos" IPA|/ɔ/, "novas" IPA|/ɔ/ "new" (masculine singular, feminine singular, masculine plural, feminine plural);
* Between some nouns or adjectives and related verb forms: adj. "seco" IPA|/e/ "dry", v. "seco" IPA|/ɛ/ "I dry"; n. "gosto" IPA|/o/ "taste", v. "gosto" IPA|/ɔ/ "I like";
* In regular verbs, the stressed vowel is normally low IPA|/a, ɛ, ɔ/, but high IPA|/ɐ, e, o/ before the nasal consonants IPA|/m/, IPA|/n/, IPA|/ɲ/ (the high vowels are also nasalized, in BP);
* Some stem-changing verbs alternate stressed high vowels with stressed low vowels in the present tense, according to a regular pattern: "cedo", "cedes", "cede", "cedem" IPA|/e-ɛ-ɛ-ɛ/; "movo", "moves", "move", "movem" IPA|/o-ɔ-ɔ-ɔ/ (present indicative); "ceda", "cedas", "ceda", "cedam" IPA|/e/; "mova", "movas", "mova", "movam" IPA|/o/ (present subjunctive). (There is another class of stem-changing verbs which alternate IPA|/i, u/ with IPA|/ɛ, ɔ/ according to the same scheme);
* In central Portugal, the 1st. person plural of verbs of the 1st. conjugation (with infinitives in "-ar") has the stressed vowel IPA|/ɐ/ in the present indicative, but IPA|/a/ in the preterite, cf. "pensamos" "we think" with "pensámos" "we thought". In BP, the stressed vowel is IPA|/ɐ̃/ in both, so they are written without accent mark.

There are also pairs of unrelated words that differ in the height of these vowels, such as "besta" IPA|/e/ "beast" and "besta" IPA|/ɛ/ "crossbow", or "este" IPA|/e/ "this one" and "este" IPA|/ɛ/ "east". Since most polysyllabic homographs of this sort can be distinguished from context, the orthography does not differentiate them.

In EP, there are several minimal pairs in which a clitic containing the vowel IPA|/ɐ/ contrasts with a monosyllabic stressed word containing IPA|/a/: "da" vs. "dá", "mas" vs. "más", "a" vs. "à" IPA|/a/, etc. In BP, however, these words are all pronounced with IPA|/a/.

Unstressed vowels

Some isolated vowels (meaning, those that are neither nasal, nor part of a diphthong) tend to change quality when they become unstressed in a fairly predictable way. In the examples below, the stressed syllable of each word is in boldface. The term "final" should be interpreted here as "at the end of a word, or before word final "-s".

With a few exceptions mentioned in the previous sections, the vowels IPA|/a/ and IPA|/ɐ/ occur in complementary distribution when stressed, the latter before nasal consonants followed by a vowel, and the former elsewhere.

In Brazilian Portuguese, the general pattern is that the stressed vowels IPA|/a, ɐ/, IPA|/e, ɛ/, IPA|/o, ɔ/ neutralize to IPA|/a/, IPA|/e/, IPA|/o/, respectively, in unstressed syllables, as is common in Romance languages. In final unstressed syllables, however, they are raised to IPA|/ɐ/, IPA|/i/, IPA|/u/. In casual BP, IPA|/e, ɛ/, IPA|/o, ɔ/ may be raised to IPA|/i/, IPA|/u/ on "any" unstressed syllable. [Harvcoltxt|Major|1992|p=10-11]

European Portuguese has taken this process one step further, raising IPA|/a, ɐ/, IPA|/e, ɛ/, IPA|/o, ɔ/ to IPA|/ɐ/, IPA|/ɨ/, IPA|/u/ in all unstressed syllables. The vowels IPA|/ɐ/ and IPA|/ɨ/ are also more centralized than their Brazilian counterparts. The three unstressed vowels IPA|/ɐ, ɨ, u/ are reduced and often voiceless, and in some cases elided in fast speech.

There are some exceptions to the rules above. For example, IPA|/i/ occurs instead of unstressed IPA|/e/ or IPA|/ɨ/, before another vowel in hiatus ("teatro", "reúne", "peão"). Also, IPA|/a/, IPA|/ɛ/ or IPA|/ɔ/ appear in some unstressed syllables, in EP. And there is some dialectal variation in the unstressed sounds: the northern accents of BP have low vowels in unstressed syllables, IPA|/ɛ, ɔ/, instead of the high vowels IPA|/e, o/. However, the Brazilian media tend to prefer the southern pronunciation. In any event, the general paradigm is a useful guide for pronunciation and spelling.

Nasal vowels, vowels that belong to falling diphthongs, and the high vowels IPA|/i/ and IPA|/u/, are not affected by this process, nor is the vowel IPA|/o/ when written as the digraph "ou".

Epenthesis

In BP, an epenthetic vowel IPA| [i] is sometimes inserted between consonants, to break up consonant clusters that are not native to Portuguese, in learned words. For example, "psicologia" "psychology" may be pronounced IPA| [pisikoloˈʒiɐ] (the letter "p" is not silent, as it is in English), and "adverso" "adverse" may be pronounced IPA| [adʒiˈvɛɾsu] . In northern Portugal, an epenthetic IPA| [ɨ] may be used instead, IPA| [pɨsikuluˈʒiɐ] , IPA| [ɐðɨˈβɛɾsu] , but in southern Portugal there is often no epenthesis, IPA| [psikuluˈʒiɐ] , IPA| [ɐdˈvɛɾsu] .

Further notes on the oral vowels

*Some words with IPA|/ɛ ɔ/ in EP have IPA|/e o/ in BP. This happens when those vowels are stressed before the nasal consonants IPA|/m/, IPA|/n/, followed by another vowel, in which case both types of vowel may occur in European Portuguese, but Brazilian Portuguese only allows high vowels. This can affect spelling: cf. EP "tónico", BP "tônico" "tonic".
*In BP, stressed vowels have nasal allophones, IPA| [ɐ̃] , IPA| [ẽ] , etc. (see below) before one of the nasal consonants IPA|/m/, IPA|/n/, IPA|/ɲ/, followed by another vowel. In EP, nasalization is nearly absent in this environment.
*Some BP speakers also diphthongize stressed vowels to IPA| [ai̯] , IPA| [ɛi̯] , IPA| [ei̯] , etc. (except IPA|/i/), before a sibilant at the end of a syllable (written "s", "x", or "z"). For instance, "Jesus" IPA| [ʒeˈzui̯s] "Jesus", "faz" IPA| [fai̯s] "he does", "dez" IPA| [dɛi̯s] "ten". This has led to the use of "meia" (meaning "meia dúzia", or "half a dozen") for "seis" IPA| [sei̯s] "six" when making enumerations, to avoid any confusion with "três" IPA| [tɾei̯s] "three" on the telephone. [Dicionário Houaiss da Língua Portuguesa, p. 1882]
*In Lisbon and surrounding areas, stressed IPA|/e/ is pronounced as IPA| [ɐ] or IPA| [ɐi] when it comes before a palatal consonant IPA|/ʎ/, IPA|/ɲ/ or a palato-alveolar IPA|/ʃ/, IPA|/ʒ/, followed by another vowel.

andhi

When two words belonging to the same phrase are pronounced together, or two morphemes are joined in a word, the last sound in the first may be affected by the first sound of the next (sandhi), either coalescing with it, or becoming shorter (a semivowel), or being deleted. This affects especially the sibilant consonants IPA|/s/, IPA|/z/, IPA|/ʃ/, IPA|/ʒ/, and the unstressed final vowels IPA|/ɐ/, IPA|/i, ɨ/, IPA|/u/.

Consonants

As was mentioned above, the dialects of Portuguese can be divided into two groups, according to whether syllable-final sibilants are pronounced as alveolar IPA|/s/, IPA|/z/, or as postalveolar consonants IPA|/ʃ/, IPA|/ʒ/. At the end of words, the default pronunciation for a sibilant is voiceless, IPA|/s, ʃ/, but in connected speech the sibilant is treated as though it were within a word (assimilation):

* If the next word begins with a voiceless consonant, the final sibilant remains voiceless IPA|/s, ʃ/; "bons tempos" IPA| [bõs ˈtẽpus] or IPA| [bõʃ ˈtẽpuʃ] "good times".
* If the next word begins with a voiced consonant, the final sibilant becomes voiced as well IPA|/z, ʒ/; "bons dias" IPA| [bõz ˈdʒiɐs] or IPA| [bõʒ ˈdiɐʃ] "good day".
* If the next word begins with a vowel, the final sibilant is treated as intervocalic, and pronounced IPA|/z/; "bons amigos" IPA| [bõz aˈmigus] or IPA| [bõz ɐˈmiguʃ] "good friends".

When two identical sibilants appear in sequence within a word, they reduce to a single consonant. For example, "nascer", "deo", "excesso", "exsudar" are pronounced with IPA| [s] by speakers who use alveolar sibilants at the end of syllables, and "disjuntor" is pronounced with IPA| [ʒ] by speakers who use postalveolars. But if the two sibilants are different they are pronounced separately. Thus, the former speakers will pronounce the last example with IPA| [zʒ] , and the latter speakers will pronounce the first examples with IPA| [ʃs] (although in relaxed pronunciation the first sibilant in each pair may be dropped). This applies also to words that are pronounced together in connected speech:
* sibilant + IPA|/s/, e.g. "as sopas": either IPA| [s] or IPA| [ʃs] ;
* sibilant + IPA|/z/, e.g. "as zonas": either IPA| [z] or IPA| [ʒz] ;
* sibilant + IPA|/ʃ/, e.g. "as chaves": either IPA| [sʃ] or IPA| [ʃ] ;
* sibilant + IPA|/ʒ/, e.g. "os genes": either IPA| [zʒ] or IPA| [ʒ] .

Vowels

Normally, only the three vowels IPA|/ɐ/, IPA|/i/ (in BP) or IPA|/ɨ/ (in EP), and IPA|/u/ occur in unstressed final position. If the next word begins with a similar vowel, they merge with it in connected speech, producing a single vowel, possibly long (crasis). Here, "similar" means that nasalization can be disregarded, and that the two central vowels IPA|/a, ɐ/ can be identified with each other. Thus,

* + IPA|/a, ɐ/IPA| [a(ː)] ; "toda a noite" IPA| [ˈtoda(ː) ˈnoi̯tʃi] or IPA| [ˈtoda(ː) ˈnoi̯tɨ] "all night", "nessa altura" IPA| [ˈnɛs au̯ˈtuɾɐ] or IPA| [ˈnɛs aɫˈtuɾɐ] "at that point".
* + IPA|/ɐ̃/IPA| [ã(ː)] (note that this low nasal vowel appears only in this situation); "a antiga" "the ancient one" and "à antiga" "in the ancient way", both pronounced IPA| [ã(ː)ˈtʃigɐ] or IPA| [ã(ː)ˈtigɐ] .
* + IPA|/i, ĩ/IPA| [i(ː), ĩ(ː)] ; "de idade" IPA| [dʒi(ː)ˈdadʒi] or IPA| [di(ː)ˈdadɨ] "aged".
* + IPA|/ɨ/IPA| [ɨ] ; "fila de espera" IPA| [ˈfilɐ dɨʃˈpɛɾɐ] "waiting line" (EP only).
* + IPA|/u, ũ/IPA| [u(ː), ũ(ː)] ; "todo o dia" IPA| [ˈtodu(ː) ˈdʒiɐ] or IPA| [ˈtodu(ː) ˈdiɐ] "all day".

If the next word begins with a dissimilar vowel, then IPA|/i/ and IPA|/u/ become approximants in Brazilian Portuguese (synaeresis):

* + V → IPA| [jV] ; "durante o curso" IPA| [duˈɾɐ̃tʃj u ˈkuɾsu] "during the course", "mais que um" IPA| [mai̯s kj ũ] "more than one".
* + V → IPA| [wV] ; "todo este tempo" IPA| [ˈtodw ˈestʃi ˈtẽpu] "all this time" "do objeto" IPA| [dw obiˈʒɛtu] "of the object".

In careful speech and in with certain function words, or in some phrase stress conditions (see Mateus and d'Andrade, for details), European Portuguese has a similar process:

* + V → IPA| [jV] ; "se a vires" IPA| [sj ɐ ˈviɾɨʃ] "if you see her", "mais que um" IPA| [mai̯ʃ kj ũ] "more than one".
* + V → IPA| [wV] ; "todo este tempo" IPA| [ˈtodw ˈeʃtɨ ˈtẽpu] "all this time", "do objecto" IPA| [dw ɔbˈʒɛtu] "of the object".

But in other prosodic conditions, and in relaxed pronunciation, EP simply drops final unstressed IPA|/ɨ/ and IPA|/u/ (elision):

* + V → IPA| [V] ; "durante o curso" IPA| [duˈɾɐ̃t u ˈkuɾsu] "during the course", "este inquilino" IPA| [ˈeʃt ĩkɨˈlinu] "this tenant".
* + V → IPA| [V] ; "todo este tempo" IPA| [tod ˈeʃtɨ ˈtẽpu] "all this time", "disto há muito" IPA| [diʃt a ˈmũi̯tu] "there's a lot of this".

Unlike French, for example, Portuguese does not indicate most of these sound changes explicitly in its orthography.

tress

Primary stress may fall on any of the three final syllables of a word, but mostly on the last two. There is a partial correlation between the position of the stress and the final vowel; for example, the final syllable is usually stressed when it contains a nasal phoneme, a diphthong, or a close vowel. The orthography of Portuguese takes advantage of this correlation to minimize the number of diacritics.

Because of the phonetic changes that often affect unstressed vowels, pure lexical stress is less common in Portuguese than in related languages, but there is still a significant number of examples of it: : "dúvida" IPA|/ˈduvidɐ/ "doubt" (noun) vs. "duvida" IPA|/duˈvidɐ/ "he doubts":"falaram" IPA|/faˈlaɾɐ̃ũ/ "they spoke" vs. "falarão" IPA|/falaˈɾɐ̃ũ/ "they will speak" (Brazilian pronunciation):"ouve" IPA|/ˈovi/ "he hears" vs. "ouvi" IPA|/oˈvi/ "I heard" (Brazilian pronunciation):"túnel" IPA|/ˈtunɛl/ "tunnel" vs. "tonel" IPA|/tuˈnɛl/ "wine cask" (European pronunciation)

Prosody

Tone is not lexically significant in Portuguese, but phrase- and sentence-level tone are important. There are of six dynamic tone patterns that affect entire phrases, which indicate the mood and intention of the speaker such as implication, emphasis, reservation, etc.Fact|date=January 2008 As in most Romance languages, interrogation is expressed mainly by sharply raising the tone at the end of the sentence.

ee also

*Differences between Spanish and Portuguese
*History of Portuguese
*Portuguese orthography, for further information on spelling
*Portuguese dialects
*Portuguese alphabet

References

Bibliography

* citation
last=Barbosa
first=Plínio A.
last2=Albano
first2=Eleonora C.
year= 2004
title=Brazilian Portuguese
journal=Journal of the International Phonetic Association
volume=34
issue=2
pages=227-232

* citation
last=Cruz-Ferreira
first=Madalena
year= 1995
title=European Portuguese
journal=Journal of the International Phonetic Association
volume=25
issue=2
pages=90-94

*citation
last = Cruz-Ferreira
first = Madalena
year= 1999
chapter=Portuguese (European)
title=Handbook of the International Phonetic Association:A Guide to the Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet
publisher=Cambridge University Press
pages=126-130
ISBN=0-521-63751-1

* citation
first=Roy C.
last=Major
contribution=Stress and Rhythm in Brazilian Portuguese
editor1-first=Dale April
editor1-last=Koike
editor2-first=Donaldo P
editor2-last=Macedo
title=Romance Linguistics: The Portuguese Context
isbn=0897892976
location=Westport, CT
publisher=Bergin & Garvey
year=1992

* citation
last=Mateus
first=Maria Helena
last2=d'Andrade
first2=Ernesto
year= 2000
title=The Phonology of Portuguese
publisher=Oxford University Press
ISBN=0-19-823581-X

*citation
first=Earl W.
last=Thomas
title=A Grammar of Spoken Brazilian Portuguese
publisher=Vanderbilt University Press
place=Nashville, TN
year=1974
isbn=082651197X

* Vázquez Cuesta, Mendes da Luz, (1987) "Gramática portuguesa", 3rd. ed. ISBN 84-249-1117-2

External links

* [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/portuguese.htm Omniglot's page on Portuguese] Includes a recording of the phonemes and diphthongs (Brazilian Portuguese).
* [http://rudhar.com/foneport/en/foneport.htm The pronunciation of the Portuguese of Portugal]
* [http://rudhar.com/foneport/en/fonesumm.htm Phoneme summary, with samples]
* [http://www.instituto-camoes.pt/CVC/cpp2/index.html Instituto Camões — A Pronúncia do Português Europeu]
* [http://www.oup.co.uk/pdf/0-19-823581-X.pdf The Phonology of Portuguese (excerpt)]


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