Análise acústico-articulatória de sons vocálicos de palavras funcionais do inglês. / ACOUSTIC ANALYSIS OF SOUNDS-articulatory Vocal FUNCTIONAL ENGLISH WORD

AUTOR(ES)
FONTE

IBICT - Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia

DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

24/08/2010

RESUMO

The present research has as its main objective to investigate the acoustic-articulatory characteristics of vowel sounds in English function words, as realized by intermediate Brazilian English as a foreign language (EFL) students, in stressed and non-stressed contexts. Previous research pointed out that Brazilian EFL students present difficulties in realizing the acoustic-articulatory characteristics related to vowel sounds produced in English function words, when realized in non-stressed context (WATKINS, 2006; FRAGOZO, 2010). In the aforementioned context, vowel sounds of function words are expected to present acousticarticulatory characteristics of a reduced vowel, the vowel // (SILVA, 2005). Grounded on the Acoustic Theory of Speech Production as well as on the Cardinal Vowels Theory, our study analyzes the acoustic-articulatory characteristics as regards duration and formants of the vowel sounds found in function words, realized by Brazilian EFL students, in stressed and non-stressed contexts and, in addition, compares through statistical procedures, all the data referring to the studied contexts. We had as informers a group of 20 EFL students of a public institution in Ceará, Brazil, at UECEs Language Course. Two experiments were carried out, called EXP. I and EXP II., involving the following function words: at, but, of, could, should, that, us, do e does. EXP. I, which presents data regarding controlled speech, makes use of 20 sentences, 10 containing function words in stressed context and 10 in non-stressed context. When comparing the realizations of vocalic sounds in function words, produced in stressed and non-stressed contexts for this experiment, we found the following results: a) as regards the formant characteristics, the realization of vocalic sounds in at, that, us, should and do presented significant differences between the stressed and non-stressed contexts; b) the production of vowel sounds, found in function words produced by our informers, did not present a realization point similar to the reduced vowel //, as realized by English native speakers; c) vowel sounds found in function words at, does and us were produced by our informers without significant differences, when stressed-context realizations were compared to non-stressed ones. In EXP. II, we made use of a small text containing the function words, at, that, but e of, in non-stressed context, which was retold by our informants in spontaneous speech. The objective of the second experiment was to observe if the realization of vowel sounds in non-stressed contexts in spontaneous speech are different from those realized in EXP. I, for stressed and non-stressed contexts in controlled speech. When non-stressed realizations of EXP. II were compared to stressed and non-stressed ones in EXP. I, it was found that the vowel sounds of function words in spontaneous speech presented similarities to those realized in controlled speech.

ASSUNTO(S)

inglês língua estrangeira palavras funcionais sons vocálicos análise acústico-articulatória linguistica aplicada vowel sounds acoustic-articulatory analysis function words english as a foreign language

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

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