On the palatal nasal of the base and the words ending in -inho

Abstract

This study concerns Portuguese non derived words which have a nasal consonant like tamanho, medonho, aranha, manha, and its derived forms in -inho(a) – tama[i)]nho (~ tamaninho), medo[i)]nho (medoninho?), ma[i) ]nha (maninha?). It is advocated that in such contexts there is evidence about the palatal nasal information of base forms. The word ranho, which derived form ranho is not misinterpreted as the derived form raio of the word raio. We interpret, in the light of Wetzels (1997; 2000), the maintenance in derived words of nasal feature of the base as an evidence of the geminate nasal. We use software PRAAT, 5.3 version (BOERSMA and WEENINCK, 2013), to try to explain this phenomenon under the acoustic approach. The obtained results would reveal the relevancy of an experimental analysis with aim theoretical hypotheses to be tested.