The effect of frontness and height in the identification of open-mid vowels and close-mid vowels in Brazilian Portuguese by Spanish speakers

Speakers of L1 Spanish have difficulty discriminating the open and close-mid vowels [e], [E], [o], [O] in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). The goal of this paper is to verify the effects of frontness and height in the perception of these vowels. A test of vowel identification was given to 16 speakers of A...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Feiden, Juliana Andrade, Alves, Ubiratã Kickhöfel, Finger, Ingrid
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2014
País:Brasil
Institución:Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS)
Repositorio:Letras de Hoje (Online)
Idioma:portugués
OAI Identifier:oai:ojs.revistaseletronicas.pucrs.br:article/14715
Acceso en línea:https://revistaseletronicas.pucrs.br/fale/article/view/14715
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Frontness
height
Identification of open-mid vowels and close mid-vowels
L2 Brazilian Portuguese.
Anterioridade
altura
Identificação das vogais médias altas e médias baixas
Português como L2.
Psicolinguística
Descripción
Sumario:Speakers of L1 Spanish have difficulty discriminating the open and close-mid vowels [e], [E], [o], [O] in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). The goal of this paper is to verify the effects of frontness and height in the perception of these vowels. A test of vowel identification was given to 16 speakers of Argentine Spanish, aged between 16 e 18 years, using minimal pairs in BP. Results show that, in both front and back vowels, participants had higher scores in items containing close-mid vowels if compared with items containing open-mid vowels In relation to the frontness effect, participants also demonstrated more difficulty in identifying open-mid vowels than close-mid vowels. The results confirm the difficulty of Spanish speakers in identifying mid vowels of BP, as well as provide evidence that these learners are forming new L2 phonetic-phonological categories, despite the difficulty of defining aspects that characterize such acoustic-articulatory categories.