Análise Fonética e Fonológica da língua Puruborá

Abstract

The Puruborá language, spoken in the state of Rondônia (Brazil), is the only known language of the Puruborá linguistic family, which belongs to the Tupi trunk (Rodrigues, 1986) and is threatened with disappearance. Four non-speakers of Puruborá are known to exist, of which only two remember the language data more precisely. Possibly, due to the long period without speaking the language fluently, the current speakers only remember lexical items and a few phrases. In this second phase of this research subproject, the goal is to develop the acoustic phonetic analysis of the Purubora nasal vowels and consonants, especially the implosives, and to finalize the organization of the lexical database, with a view to the future development of a Purubora-Portuguese vocabulary. With this, this work will help in the development of the phonetic and phonological analysis, in progress, of the above-mentioned language (GALUCIO, forthcoming) and its scientific documentation. The acoustic analysis of nasal vowels consists in measuring the duration and the first three formants (FI, F2, F3). Through these measurements it is possible to identify the phonetic quality of each vowel, by means of the distribution, mainly, of the FI and F2 values in the vocal tract. By observing in the sound gram spectrum the acoustic correlates that identify consonants, it is possible to characterize their phonetic realization. Signal Explorer and Formant Explorer software is used to develop the acoustic study. The database, organized in the data storage program (Toolbox), contains about 700 lexical items, which were systematized from data collected since 2001 by Galucio. In the previous phase of this work, it was confirmed through acoustic analyses that the Puruborá language presents a phonetic framework of seven oral vowels: [a], [8], [i], [g], C:)], eu]. At the current stage, a phonetic picture of six nasal vowels distinct from each other [ã], [e], [í], [õ], [u] was found. Regarding consonants, the study confirms the occurrence of a bilabial irnplosive consonant [5], in phonetically conditioned contexts