A aquisição de L3 : a produção da lateral por falantes multilíngues de francês como L1, inglês como L2 e português brasileiro como L3

Abstract

The present study investigated the production of medial and final postvocalic lateral by multilingual speakers of French as L1, English as L2 and Brazilian Portuguese as L3. This study is based on Usage Base Phonology (BYBEE, 2001; 2002; 2010) and Exemplar Theory (PIERREHUMBERT, 2001, 2003, 2006). The models conceive the phonetic detail and gradience as part of speakers’ mental representations. Experience and the use of the language are also considered as essential on the organization and on the management of linguistic knowledge. The investigation proposed the lateral darkness index from the formula [(F2- F1)+F3]norm, based on the lateral darkness continuous feature suggested by Recasens (2012). According to the differences in the lateral darkness index that French, English and Portuguese have in medial and final coda position, the objective of the research was to carry out a sociophonetic study on the production of the lateral by multilingual speakers, living in Porto Alegre/RS. The study consists of a sample of five multilingual and three monolingual participants, one for each language considered. Multilinguals took part in six production instruments, namely: personal experience interview; images naming, Portuguese word reading, nonwords reading, English word reading and French word reading. Each monolingual participated in the word reading instrument related to their mother tongue. All data were recorded using the resources of Zoom videoconferencing platform and treated acoustically using the Praat software, version 6.1.50 (BOERSMA & WEENINK, 2021). The acoustic analysis of the lateral in French as L1, in English as L2 and in BP as L3 of the multilinguals allowed us to verify the reduction of the lateral darkness index in L2 and in L3 in relation to that of L1. The lateral produced in French as L1 presented a higher darkness index than that of English as L2, which presented a darkness index higher than or equal to that of Brazilian Portuguese as L3 (French-L1 > English-L2 ≥ BP-L3). This result, contrary to the hypothesis that the lateral in French as L1 would present a darkness index higher than or equal to Brazilian Portuguese as L3, which would present a darkness index lower than or equal to the lateral produced in English as L2 (French-L1 ≥ PB- L3 ≤ English-L2), shows the stability of French as L1 and the vulnerability of English as L2 and Brazilian Portuguese as L3. The analysis of the conditioners of lateral darkness index in Brazilian Portuguese as L3 revealed that the factors acting in the reduction of the index are the preceding vowels [a] and [ɛ]; the stressed syllables context, the words reading compared to nonword and, finally, the less controlled speech, obtained through interviews of personal experience and images naming