2015-05-252015-05-252015-02-23FAGUNDES, Giselda da Rocha. O abaixamento das vogais médias pretônicas em Belém/PA: um estudo variacionista sobre o dialeto do migrante maranhense frente ao dialeto falado em Belém/PA. 2015. 159 f. Dissertação (Mestrado) - Universidade Federal do Pará, Instituto de Letras e Comunicação, Belém, 2015. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras.https://repositorio.ufpa.br/handle/2011/6720This study aimed to investigate the lowering of the middle unstressed vowels in the variety of Portuguese spoken in Belém (PA). We base ourselves on the assumptions of quantitative sociolinguistics of Labov (1972), and used some methodological procedures adopted by Bortoni-Ricardo (1985) for the analysis of social networks, which are important for the study of dialects in migration communities, as is the case of Bethlehem, which received intense migration in the 50 to 80 of the last century. Also used for comparison, results Castro (2008), Jones (2010), and Ferreira (2013). The corpus was formed from recordings of 18 informants interviews, divided into two groups: a) a tether, with twelve (12) migrant informants state of Maranhão (six (06) male and six (06) female), aged 50 or more, and who reside in Bethlehem more than twenty-five years; b) a control group, with 06 (six) informants (three (03) male and three (03) were female), Pará descendants of the anchor group, aged between 20 and 30 years, or who migrated to Bethlehem very new, with up to three years. The corpus of data submitted to analysis totaled 3.099 occurrences of vowels object, before </ e /> (1.948) and later </ o /> (1.151). Were established as extralinguistic variables: sex, sample group and educational level. For linguistic variables were considered: height stressed vowel, the tonic decrease of degree, degree of nasality of tonic, pretônica position in the word, adjacent vowel, distance on the stressed syllable, previous segment, next segment and type of rhyme. After statistical analysis computed by Goldvarb X software, the results showed that in the dialect of Belém / PA there is a predominance of maintenance variants - [e] and 40.7% [the] 43.5% at the expense of the increasing height - [ i] and 23.9% [u] 16.1%, and lowering - [E] 35.5% and [O] 40.4%, however, to be lowering the most productive variant in Maranhão, this was the phenomenon analyzed. The linguistic variables that favored the lowering of the studied variants were: (i) time of stressed vowel, (ii) the degree of decline of tonic, (iii) degree of nasality of tonic, (iv) contiguous vowel, (v) distance on the stressed syllable, (vi) the previous segment, (vii) next segment and (viii) type of rhyme. With regard to extra-linguistic variables (ix) the sample group favored lowering both </ e /> much </ o /> and variable (x) sex only favored the lowering </ e />. The results revealed maintenance of dialectal brand of Maranhão migrants even under interdialetal contact with another dialect and showed that vowel lowering dialect in question is motivated mainly by vowel harmony process. These results reflect the social network of informants, which has high density and whose vernacular is a symbol of identity.porAcesso AbertoSociolinguísticaLíngua portuguesaVariação linguísticaDialetosGeografia linguísticaPará - EstadoMaranhão - EstadoAmazônia brasileiraDissertaçãoCNPQ::LINGUISTICA, LETRAS E ARTES::LINGUISTICA::SOCIOLINGUISTICA E DIALETOLOGIA