REGRESSIVE PALALIZATION OF ALVEOLAR OCCLUSIVES IN ALAGOAS
Variationist sociolinguistics; regressive palatalization; Alagoas.
This work goal to investigate the phonetic/phonological processes of regressive palatalization of alveolar stops produced in Brazilian Portuguese spoken in the state of Alagoas from the perspective of Variationist Sociolinguistics (LABOV, 2008 [1972]), contrasting the linguistic data collected with internal variables (previous context, syllable position, target consonant, word size and trigger nature) and external (age, sex/gender, education and diatopic distribution), in order to identify possible conditions for the use of the palatalized variant and to analyze whether the regressive palatalization process reflects a stable variation or change in progress. In the treatment of phonological variants, the autosegmental perspective (GOLDSMITH, 1995) and the theory of geometric features (CLEMENTS; HUME, 1995) are used as theoretical-methodological support. The research seeks to analyze the processes of regressive palatalization considering that, in several regions of Brazil, this regressive context has been quite common in the speaking communities of the South and Southeast of Brazil (HORA, 1990; BISOL, 1991; 1997; DUTRA, 2007 , HENRIQUE; HORA, 2012) in words like “[dZ]ia” and “[tS]ia”. In this study, it was possible to conclude that the regressive palatalization in the speech community of Alagoas is in an apparent expansion process, going from the coast to the interior of the state.