The unstressed vocalism in the history of the Portuguese

Abstract

In the current European Portuguese, the mid vowel raising operates in all unstressed contexts: pretonics (p[ɨ]gar, t[u]car) and posttonics (núm[ɨ]r[u], árv[u]r[ɨ], pel[ɨ], pel[u]). In the case of the varieties of the current Brazilian Portuguese, this rule is usually general only for the vowels in unstressed final open syllables (pel[i], pel[u]); in the pretonic context, the mid vowel raising, in the current Brazilian dialects, it is a variable rule, commonly conditioned by specific phonetic-phonological contexts (p[i]dido, c[u]stume, [i]scola, [i] mprego, d[i]sconto). In order to investigate the process of unstressed mid vowel raising throughout the history of the Portuguese language, this work presents and compares data from centuries XIII, XV and XVI that suggest the application of the raising rule in pretonic and posttonic vowels of those periods. These data, obtained by Fonte (2010a,b, 2014) through the observation of the written in the Cantigas de Santa Maria by Alfonso X, in the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende and in Os Lusíadas by Camões, suggest that, until the sixteenth century, at least, the mid vowel raising was a variable rule, quite common among the pretonic vowels, but still incipient among the final posttonic vowels.