The interaction between the segmental and suprasegmental: the r-deletion process at intonational phrase boundary

Abstract

This paper discusses the relation between variable R-deletion in final coda position, in non-verbs (senhoR ~ senho[Ø] / siR ~ si[Ø]), and the intonational phrase (IP) boundary. Based on the hypothesis that lower boundaries in the prosodic hierarchy—prosodic word (PW) and phonological phrase (PhP)—favor the implementation of the deletion process, whereas the higher IP boundary tends to inhibit it (Callou; Serra, 2012; Serra; Callou, 2013, 2015), this analysis focuses on the dynamics between the (non)maintenance of the segment and the incidence of intonational and acoustic cues in the final IP contour. Such clues include the presence of pitch movement (pitch accent and boundary tone) at the rightmost PW of the constituent and the occurrence of silent pauses. The theoretical frameworks of Prosodic Phonology (Nespor & Vogel, 1986) and the Autosegmental-Metrical Approach to Intonational Phonology (Pierrehumbert, 1980; Ladd, 2008) guide this study. The analysis involves speech excerpts from interviews recorded in Chuí, located in Rio Grande do Sul, as part of the Atlas Linguístico do Brasil (ALiB). The 113 occurrences of R at the IP boundary were edited in the Audacity program (version 2.0.5) and submitted to acoustic analysis using Praat (Boersma & Weenink, 2017). The results reinforce the hypothesis that the IP domain tends to disfavor the implementation of R-deletion, since the manifestation of the textual material is crucial for anchoring the tones that make up the main melody of the sentence.
Keywords: Rhotic. Intonational Phrase. ALiB.