João Veloso

In this text, we propose that formal, explicit teaching of very basic notions of phonetics and phonology is gradually introduced in the teaching of L1. The main arguments in favour of this point of view relate to the well-known beneficial effects of phonological awareness on the learning of writing and reading and to some educational experiences that have proven very effective in this field. We share the view that exposing students to the phonetic/phonological dimension of their own language throughout Basic and Secondary Education is doable and advisable so that a number of teachers and subjects benefit from this exposure: Biology, Philosophy, Literature, among others. A sequential, fixed order for the familiarisation of students with such notions is not presented here, as further research and educational experimentation is needed as to attain a reasonable consensos on this specific point. Palavras-chave: Treino fonético explícito; consciência fonológica; literacia; aprendizagem de L1 1. Considerações introdutórias A investigação sobre a consciência fonológica em crianças em idade pré-escolar e nas primeiras fases da aprendizagem da leitura e da escrita conhece uma tradição longa e rica, que coloca ao nosso dispor dados tão importantes como a verificação de que a consciência fonológica detém uma função facilitadora relativamente a essas aprendizagens: estudos realizados e materiais desenvolvidos para aplicação em diversas línguas e em diferentes contextos nacionais e culturais revelam invariavelmente que crianças intensivamente expostas a tarefas precoces de desenvolvimento fonológico revelam menores dificuldades e maior rapidez no processo de aprendizagem da leitura e da escrita (Mark et al.

Em diversas variedades do português, assim como noutras línguas românicas, as adjacências vocálicas  /aI/ e /aU/ motivaram frequentemente a mudança de /a/ para [e] ou [o]. Este fenómeno, designável como “assimilação vocálica”, viria a dar origem, em português, aos ditongos históricos [ej] e [ow] (conservados nos dialetos setentrionais do português europeu contemporâneo), por sua vez posteriormente sujeitos a outros fenómenos de mudança fonético-fonológica. De entre estes, destaca-se a coalescência do ditongo numa vogal única (conforme se verifica em variedades do português meridional, bem como no francês metropolitano e no espanhol). O mesmo processo é ainda responsável por inúmeros casos de alomorfia ainda hoje produtivos na flexão verbal do português, nomeadamente nos verbos da primeira conjugação. Neste trabalho, propomos descrever este processo assimilatório, à luz da fonologia dos elementos, como um processo de coloração que se aplica uniformemente aos casos da diacronia e da sincronia, fonológica e morfologicamente motivados, em português e noutras línguas românicas, e que consistiria na absorção dos elementos tonais {I} e {U} pela primeira vogal (atonal) dessas sequências originais.

Oral and written productions of language seem to correspond to ontologically separate entities. In this paper, we shall not argue against this basic assumption. However, it will be proposed that a careful examination of the writing systems and of particular written productions can provide phonologists with important information about the nature of phonological representations. Writing systems often originate in relevant intuitions about the nature of phonological units and phenomena and preserve the morphophonemic kinships between roots and words that are surfaced as phonetically distinct. The same can be said about the written productions of preschool children and illiterate adults, strongly shaped by phonological intuitions rather than by orthographic convention. Bearing in mind that phonology, within the generative approach that is adopted here, is a form of knowledge, spelling can be accepted as a way of getting access to phonological knowledge. Therefore, our main point is that, in spite of the classical divide between spoken and written language, attention to writing can be useful for the understanding of the phonological level, too. The article includes two main parts: firstly, on Sections 2 and 3, we shall survey some general aspects of the relation between phonological and written representations; the second part consists mainly of Section 4 and attempts to illustrate some of the topics presented in Sections 2 and 3 with some data of a small-scale study with Portuguese pre-schoolers. RESUMEN: Fonología y escritura: ¿puede asumirse que las producciones escritas son 'habla visible' que permite ver lo invisible en fonología?-Las producciones lingüísticas orales y las escritas corresponden a entidades ontológi-camente diferentes. En este artículo no presentaremos argumentos en contra de esta asunción básica. Sin embargo, se propondrá que un examen minucioso de los sistemas de escritura y de determinadas producciones escritas puede proporcionar a los fonólogos información relevante acerca de la naturaleza de las representaciones fonológicas. Los sistemas de escritura se originan a menudo a partir de valiosas intuiciones sobre la naturaleza de las unidades y los fenómenos fonológicos, y preservan las relaciones morfofonológicas entre las raíces y las palabras que se manifiestan en la superficie como fonéticamente distintas. Lo mismo puede afirmarse con respecto a las producciones escritas de los niños en edad preescolar y de los adultos iletrados, cuya forma está fuertemente condicionada por las intuiciones fonológicas más que por las convenciones ortográficas. Partiendo de la base de que la fonología, en el marco del enfoque generativista que se adopta aquí, es un modo de conocimiento, el deletreo constituye así una vía para acceder a ese conocimiento fonológico. Por consiguiente, nuestra conclusión principal es que, pese a la división entre lengua escrita y hablada, prestar atención a la escritura puede contribuir a un mejor conocimiento del nivel fonológico. El artículo consta de dos partes principales: en las Secciones 2 y 3 repasamos algunos de los aspectos generales de la relación entre las representaciones fonológicas y las escritas; la segunda parte (Sección 4) intenta ilustrar algunos de los temas de las Secciones 2 y 3 con datos de un pequeño estudio con niños portugueses en edad preescolar. Palabras clave: conocimiento fonológico; alfabetización; sistemas de escritura; deletreo.

It has been argued whether Portuguese phonology comprehends a Minimality Condition imposed to all lexical entries of the language. The existence of a non-neglectable number of " light " CV monosyllables in this language has been interpreted as a clue of the irrelevance of such phonological constraint in this language. In this paper, we argue in favour of viewing Portuguese phonology as sensitive to minimality: with a very few exceptions only (basically corresponding to clitics), all words in Portuguese obey a mora-based minimality constraint which establishes that any word be at least bisyllabic or, if monosyllabic, a heavy syllable. Syllable weight is then assumed also as an important prosodic property of Portuguese. In addition to the traditional criterion to accept monosyllables as heavy (i. e., rhyme branching), a weight parametrization is postulated accepting that sonority and element iteration (within an Element Theory-based approach of the vowels' segmental structure) do count also for syllable weight. Therefore, Portuguese monosyllables – either through rhyme branching or the inherent weight of vowels with high degrees of sonority or iterated elements – might be seen as compatible with the weight-sensitive minimality constraints that are functional in this language. RESUMO: A inclusão de uma Condição de Minimalidade imposta pela fonologia do português a todas as palavras da língua tem sido objeto de discussão em estudos anterio-res. A existência de um número considerável de monossílabos CV em português descritos como " leves " tem sido apontada como um argumento que desvaloriza uma restrição de minimalidade nesta língua. Neste trabalho, defenderemos que a fonologia do português é sensível à minimalidade: com a exceção de um número reduzido de casos (de que os clíticos monossilábicos são os principais exemplos), todas as palavras do português obedecem a uma Condição de Minimalidade de tipo moraico que estabelece que qualquer palavra da língua é, no mínimo, bissilábica e, caso seja monossilábica, deverá corresponder a uma

We will analyze a small set of lexical borrowings that Sinhala imported from Portuguese in the 16tth century. The study will focus on the phonological analysis of loanword adaptation underwent by such borrowings. On the basis of this analysis, some regularities about the phonologies of 16th century-Portuguese and, mainly, 16th century-Sinhala will be postulated. Among our main proposals, emphasis will be given to: (a) the lack of branching onsets {StopFlap} and of word-final consonants in 16th century-Sinhala and, subsequently, epenthesis in tandem with vowel harmony as a repair strategy for the phonological nativization of lexical borrowings in this language; (b) vowel reduction of unstressed, back, round vowels in 16th century-Portuguese. We will thus aim at showing that observation of this kind of linguistic data, in addition to its historical/cultural pertinence, leads us to relevant information regarding the phonological description of languages in contact, both synchronically and diachronically.

Words that combine different etyma do not correspond necessarily to morphologically complex words. We argue that the main property for classifying a word as morphologically complex is its compositional processing. Portuguese lexicon admits a set of words that combine different Latin or Greek etyma. These are commonly said to form a special subset within the lexicon of Portuguese and to be the result of a special process of compounding (“morphological compounding”), defined on the basis of etymology only. Since etymological information is not part of the speakers’ I-language (the linguist’s explicandum), these words should be described as morphologically simple words.

Nous examinerons différentes questions impliquées dans la fixation et l’enseignement d’une norme phonétique. Il sera question du rôle des linguistes dans les travaux apparemment prescriptifs. Entre les arguments en faveur de cette approche on invoquera (i) la connaissance détaillée du linguiste sur les variations historiques, géographiques et sociales de la langue, (ii) la possibilité de travailler des normes non standard aussi, (iii) la légitimation de l’utilisation des normes non standard en beaucoup de situations de communication. Outre le contexte éducatif, on présentera des données sur l’entraînement articulatoire en contexte artistique aussi. Les contextes d’illustration sont relatifs au portugais, au mirandais et au français.

The origins of human language were officially banned, for over one century, from the scientific debate among linguists. Nevertheless, this issue – which has never been forgotten in domains such anthropology, evolutionary biology or archeology, among others – has returned into the linguistics' agenda. Perhaps the most fascinating question arising from this debate has to do with how did language evolve from the primeval protolanguages and how did languages reach each inhabited place on earth. Paleo-historic and paleolinguistic evidence show us that, in the first millennia of hominization, Homo was an errant species,

This chapter discusses the processes of vowel neutralization (VNeu), mid-vowel harmony (MVH), and vowel nasalization (VNas). Of these processes, VNeu and VNas are active in the vowel systems of both European Portuguese (EP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP), whereas MVH is only found in BP. VNeu in Portuguese may affect both unstressed and stressed mid-vowels. Although the focus is on unstressed vowel neutralization (UVNeu), stressed mid-vowel neutralization is briefly discussed also. The chapter analyzes unstressed as well as stressed VNeu in both varieties as a mechanism of feature deletion followed by respecification with the unmarked features. EP and BP possess a set of contrastive nasal vowels and nasal diphthongs. The ongoing debate among phonologists is whether the oral vs. nasal contrast in vowels and diphthongs is phonological or phonetic. The chapter describes the mainstream analysis for BP and EP nasal vowels, which derives these sounds from an underlying/VN/sequence.

The programme of the conference¡ nduded different contributions which outlined topics such as multilingualism, multiculturalism, the new role of languages, e-ieaming in languages, and implications for ICT-bssed learning and language learning, The importance of the above-...

This paper discusses the relations between voicing, consonantal duration and tenseness of the oral stops of Portuguese. The data in this study uphold die interpretations of certain authors who assign to tenseness, and not to voicing, the main role in the opposition between /p t k/ and /b d g/ of Portuguese.