Distinção de ponto de articulação no Português de Belo Horizonte: exemplos em plosivas e fricativas

Abstract

This article deals with the auditory cues used for the distinction of the place of articulation in Brazilian Portuguese (PB). In the first part, we describe the acoustic properties of the fricatives [ʃ] and [s] and the stops [b] and [d] followed by the vowel [a] of Brazilian Portuguese (BP). We analyzed speech samples of seven native BP speakers recorded in Belo Horizonte. Similar duration values were obtained for [ʃ] and [s], as well as for the release phase of oral occlusion in the stops. The prevoicing phase was longer for [b] than for [d]. More prominent amplitude peaks and energy concentration in higher frequency regions were obtained in [s] when compared to [ʃ]. We registered energy peaks in higher frequency regions for [d] as compared to [b]. Finally, F2 was higher at the beginning of formant transition for [a] following [ʃ] and [d] when compared to [s] and [b]. In the second part, eight native speakers of Belo Horizonte performed a classification task. Both the F2 and F3 transition and the center of gravity aided in the distinction of /ʃapa/-/sapa/. The use of fricative noise was different as a function of formant transition, what is compatible with the acoustic description in which the transition was almost null for [s]. For /bata/-/data/, the participants did not use the burst cue for the classification of [b] and [d], only the formant transition. The results confirm that linguistic differences affect the perception of the place of articulation and show which characteristics are used by BP speakers.