Perfil comparativo-tipológico das consoantes nasais em línguas da família Tupí-Guaraní

Abstract

This work aims to produce a comparative-typological profile of the phonetic variants of the nasal consonants in languages of the Tupí-Guaraní family. For the selection of the analyzed languages, it was decided to include different branches of the Tupí-Guaraní family, acording to the internal classification suggested by Rodrigues and Cabral (2002), in order to increase the comprehensiveness of typological studies regarding the Tupi languages. The Parakanã and Tembé (Branch IV), Wayampi (Branch VIII), Asuriní of Xingu, the Anambé and Araweté (Branch V) languages were chosen, all of which have original audio recordings obtained from native speakers; for the phonological aspects, the study was based on the proposals already available for these languages. The research consists of a phonetic-acoustic analysis of the nasal consonants of these Tupí languages, making typological generalizations about how these consonants are manifested. The results are discussed with the framework of articulatory phonology (BROWMAN AND GOLDSTEIN, 1989) who defend the idea that lexicals units can be described in terms of articulatory gestures coordinated both in space and in time, represented by what the authors call gestural score. Furthermore, this work includes a comparison of nasals in the selected Tupí languages, highlighting existing trends and patterns based on the description of the phonetic implementations of nasals in the selected languages. It was found that when there is partial oralization in the nasal consonants, the Tupí-Guaraní languages of branch IV have a tendency to introduce pre-oralization, while the languages of branch V tend to have post-oralization. This result shows up as an argument for division of the branches of the Tupi-Guarani family, proposed by Rodrigues (1986) and revised by Rodrigues and Cabral (2002).