A realização da vogal /o/ em posição tônica no falar paulivense – zona rural (Amazonas)

Abstract

The High Solimões region is located in western Amazonas, it has a significant variety of peoples and cultures. As it is a large territorial area, there is still little research carried out, specifically, in Variationist Sociolinguistics. In this research, we chose to study, a variable phonetic-phonological aspect in a city located in that region that has already been studied in other regions of Amazonas and which seems to be in the process of extinction: the raising of the vowel / o / in tonic position. Thus, this study main goal is to investigate the realization of the vowel / o /, in a tonic position, in the words of the rural area of the city of São Paulo de Olivença (AM) residents, in order to contribute to the knowledge of Brazilian dialectal areas. For this purpose, it was specifically purposeful to describe the variants of the vowel / o / in stressed position in that locality; analyze the groups of conditioning factors, linguistic and extralinguistic, which may be influencing the phenomenon under study; discuss whether this phenomenon is a stable variety or whether it is in the process of change through the observation of apparent time (age). Regarding the methodology, the informants in this investigation were stratified according to age (18 to 35 years, 36 to 55 years, 56 years onwards), education (elementary school I: 0 to 3 years of schooling; Elementary school II: 4 to 9 years of schooling; and high school: 10 to 12 years of schooling), sex (man and woman) and zone (two riverside communities), totaling 28 informants. After transcribing the interviews, 5,040 data were submitted to the GoldvarbX statistical program. From the total data, 3,795 were of the variant [o], corresponding to 75.3% of the total and 1,228 realizations of the variant [u] which corresponds to 24.4% of the data. In addition to the predicted variants, two more realizations appeared, the [e] which presented 3 occurrences, corresponding to 0.1%, and the [a] which presented 14 occurrences, corresponding to 0.3% of the general data. As for the controlled linguistic and extralinguistic independent variables, considering the statistical round without previous and subsequent contexts, the statistical program selected the significant groups in the following order: word classes, age group, education, diphthong, location and word position. There was also a round by location, in which Santa Rita do Weill, with the removal of contexts and position in the word, selected the following groups of factors: class of words, age group, education, diphthong and, unlike the general round, sex. In the Monte Santo round, after removing the contexts, adjective and numeral (word classes), position in the word and age group - due to knockouts and overlaps, he selected the following groups of factors: word classes, education and diphthong. With the results obtained, it was observed that, among the controlled independent variables, the linguistic word classes proved to be the most relevant for the understanding of the studied phenomenon, the elevation, even though it appears with little occurrence. It is hoped that this research has enabled the knowledge of the variants of the vowel / o /, in tonic position, used in the speech of the interviewed residents of the rural area of São Paulo de Olivença (AM), as well as having understood which independent variables act on the said phenomenon.