The Development Of Phonology In Spanish And Portuguese

Although it has long been recognized that second language pronunciation is strongly influenced by the native language, second language phonology has only become a recognized area of study during the last thirty years. While English has been the most frequent target language involved, the learners' L1s have varied greatly. This is the first collection to gather together studies involving English learners whose L1 is Spanish or Brazilian Portuguese, two closely-related languages with important phonological differences. The research covers vowel perception and production, syllable simplification strategies, word and compound stress, and vowel reduction. While the papers confirm the important role of the native language, they also shed light on the sometimes subtle and unexpected ways in which this variable interacts with universal markedness relationships to determine the formation of phonetic categories and their use in perception and production. These eleven carefully conducted empirical studies will provide insights for practitioners and stimulate further research.

Widely recognized as the standard work in its field, this volume traces in systematic form the history of the development of the sounds and forms of the Portuguese language from its Latin beginnings. Based upon years of research and painstaking consideration of all the significant publications on the subject, it clarifies a great deal that has been obscure in the transition from Latin to Old Portuguese, to modern Portuguese, and to Brazilian Portuguese. It also helps resolve many of the complex problems of Spanish and general Romance philology. For the second edition of From Latin to Portuguese, the author, Edwin B. Williams, has made substantial additions and revisions, has brought the bibliography up to date, and has utilized the latest research to reevaluate and confirm his original conclusions. In the light of these adjustments and the new material made available by Williams, this extraordinary synthesis must be classified as an indispensable handbook for the student and scholar working in the areas of Portuguese, Hispanic, and Romance philology.

This volume contains 15 papers selected from the 7th Conference on the Acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese as First and Second Languages, which was held at the University of Minnesota in 2004. The papers discuss how children and adults learn Spanish and Portuguese, examining acquisition and development in the areas of phonology, morphology, syntax, and writing.

Portuguese emerged from vulgar Latin during the course of the third century. Influential in its development were successive invasions by Germanic peoples, Visigoths, and Moors, the latter of whom were finally evicted in the thirteenth century. As a consequence of the newly-independent kingdoms imperial achievements, Portuguese is the national language of Brazil and the official language of several African countries. Maria Helena Mateus and Ernesto dAndrade present a broad description and comparative analysis of the phonetics and phonology of European and Brazilian Portuguese. They begin by introducing the history of Portuguese and its principal varieties. Chapter 2 describes the phonetic characteristics of consonants, vowels, and glides, and Chapter 3 looks at prosodic structure. Chapters 4 and 5 present the general characteristics of Portuguese nominal and verbal systems, the former considering inflectional and the latter derivational processes. Chapter 6 examines stress, main, secondary, and echo, and Chapter 7 describes phonological processes that are not related to the morphological structure of the word, including the peculiar process of nazalization. The authors deploy current theoretical models to explain the rich variety of Portuguese phonology and interrelated aspects of morphology. This is by far the most comprehensive account of the subject to have appeared in English, and the most up-to-date in any language.

Nasality, whether part of a consonant or vowel, has certain phonetic and phonological characteristics that lead to outcomes seen time and again in languages with and without common ancestries. Spanish and Portuguese constitute a particularly fruitful language pairing for studying phonological aspects of synchronic and diachronic variation, given their intimate relationship as well as the array of dialectal variation in each. This research monograph offers a comprehensive exploration of nasals and nasalization in Spanish and Portuguese with a special focus on the role of perception in order to provide insight into how perception informs models of phonetics, phonology and language change. Of interest to researchers and advanced students alike, this volume integrates phonetic and phonological models of speech perception and production, and discusses these with regards to original empirical research on the perception of nasal place features and vowel nasalization by listeners of Peninsular Spanish, Cuban Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese.

This study is an investigation of three phonological changes from Latin to Spanish and Portuguese: consonant + yod inversion and palatalization, palatalization of Latin and Romance obstruent + lateral clusters, and lenition and the development of the strong word boundary. It accounts for certain aspects of palatalization, segment inversion, and the creation and extension of an obstruent strength pattern by investigating the specific ways in which phonological rules and representations are modified and restructured during the course of a sound change.