Preceding phonological context effects on palatalization in Brazilian Portuguese/English interphonology

Resumo

This article reports a study investigating the effects of the preceding context on palatalization of word-final alveolar stops by Brazilian learners of English. Thirty learners with 150 hours of formal instruction in English read a sentence list in the FL including 240 tokens of final alveolar stops in different preceding and following context combinations. The hypothesis investigated was that high vowels and rising diphthongs in the preceding context would cause more palatalization than mid and low vowels due to carryover effects from vowels to the target sound. The hypothesis was supported. A hierarchy of difficulty concerning preceding phonological contexts was established from the results. The combination of preceding and following phonological contexts was also investigated.