Prosodic phrasing of parenthetical structures in reading data of Brazilian Portuguese from Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This article focuses on the realization of parenthetical structures in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), from a phonological point of view. We departed from the literature review, not only in the scope of phonology, but also in the interface with syntax and text studies, and we did acoustic and intonational analysis of 568 sentences read out (42 sentences x 15 speakers, excluding 62 data), from the theoretical and methodological framework of the Autosegmental-Metrical Theory of Entonation and of the Prosodic Phonology, in order to contribute to the description of the intonational grammar of BP, with regard to prosodic phrasing. The analysis considered the occurrence and duration of silent pauses before and after the parentheticals, as well as the tonal movements within the three ideal intonational phrases (IPs) that constitute each utterance. Two of the initial hypotheses were confirmed: (i) that the parenthetic structure is performed in BP as an independent IP and (ii) that the prosodic phrasing of the parenthetical is sensitive to the size of the first IP of the utterance. The results revealed interesting differences in relation to those obtained by other researchers for European Portuguese (EP): in BP, our data indicate that pauses on the left of the parenthetical are more frequent than pauses on its right. Also, we found out that the descending contours in the first and second IPs are predominant. In EP, differently, literature indicates that pauses at the beginning of parentheticals predominate, as well as ascending contours in the first and second IPs.