The Lateral Segment /l/ in Internal Rhyme. Sonority and Nuclearization in European Portuguese

Abstract

In European Portuguese, the common articulation of the lateral segment /l/ in implosive position has a secondary (vocalic) articulation on the velar region: malta - ma[ɫ]ta. Other systems, namely Brazilian Portuguese, show vocalized productions: malta - ma[w]ta. These productions, that appear in many other linguistic varieties, may be interpreted as a step of a nucleation process, based on dyachronic changes as well as on phonetic and phonological data of many languages. The present paper presents the results of several phonetic analysis of standard European Portuguese informants. The data show strong relation between the implosive lateral segment and the precedent vowel, whose pure vocalic part reduces up to 33% of the sequence. These realizations do not only modify the articulation of /l/, but also the sonority of the segment, that increases as the segment adquires vocalic features. Based on the phonetic analysis, this work proposes that the velarization of /l/ is an intermediate step of a more general nucleation process, that corresponds to the increase in sonority of the segments at the right of the nucleus.