A monotongação dos ditongos orais decrescentes no falar manauara

Abstract

This research had as purpose to analyze the occurrence of the phonetic-phonological phenomenon of the monophthongization of falling oral diphthongs /aj/, /ej/ and /ow/ in manauara speech according of Variationist Sociolinguistics (LABOV, 2008 [1972]; WEINREICH; LABOV; HERZOG, 2006 [1968]). In this empirical research, data were obtained using different data collection instruments to capture different speech records: sociolinguistic interview, application of a phonetic-phonological questionnaire and reading of texts. For sample composition, 16 informants from the urban area of Manaus were interviewed. In order to understand the variable phenomenon under study, the linguistic independent variables were controlled: following context, stress, position in the word and grammatical class; and the extralinguistic independent variables: sex, age group, schooling, housing location and type of data collection. A total of 4.936 data were transcribed, which after excluding categorical and doubtful cases, 3.898 remained, 552 of the variable /aj/, 1.597 of the variable /ej/ and 1.749 of the variable /ow/. The data for each variable were submitted to statistical analysis separated by the GoldVarb X program (SANKOFF; TAGLIAMONTE; SMITH, 2005) to verify the influence of groups of factors on the researched phenomenon. For /aj/, 101 occurrences were of the variant [a], which corresponds to 18.3%, and 451 were of the variant [aj], which corresponds to 81.7% of the data. For /ej/, 807 data were of the variant [e], corresponding to 50.5% of frequency, and 790 were of the variant [ej], corresponding to 49.5%. For /ow/, 1.143 occurrences were of the variant [o], which is equivalent to 65.4% of the data, and 606 were of the variant [ow], which is equivalent to 34.6%. The general results showed that for /aj/, monophthongization is very reduced in manauara speech; for /ej/, diphthong reduction is bigger, but it is in balanced variation with the maintenance of the diphthong; for /ow/, monophthongization occurs more generally, reaching the highest frequency of use of the reduced variant among the diphthongs analyzed.