A MONOTONGAÇÃO DO DITONGO [EJ] NA FALA DO PESSOENSE

Abstract

Monotongation is the name given to the process in which a diphthong is performed as a simple vowel, resulting from the deletion of the diphthong's semivowel. Considering the Theory of Variation (LABOV, 1972, 1994), from the work of Hora (2001, 2012), Silva (2001; 2004), and Aragão (2009), this research aims to analyze how much the phenomenon of Monotongation of the diphthong [ej] is recurrent in the speech of João Pessoa's men, in addition to verifying which extralinguistic variables (age group, education, and interview subject) and which linguistic variables (next phonological context, morphological nature, number of syllables, tonicity, and grammatical class) positively condition or restrict its fulfillment. For this study, a sample of 12 informants was selected from the database of the VALPB Project (Linguistic Variation in the State of Paraíba), interviewed in 2018. All informants are male, stratified about the age group (15 to 25 years and over 49 years) and schooling (from zero to five years, from six to eleven years, and more than eleven years of schooling). All data will be treated statistically in the RStudio (2020) program and the expected results are that the following phonological context and the syllable tone are presented as the most significant factors for the occurrence of Monotongation.