Portuguese Morphophonology: A Generative-Markedness Approach: Volume 1 Foundations

‘Foundations’ reviews prior work in Portuguese phonology. The Portuguese (morpho)phonemic inventory illustrates its markedness approach. A 156 phoneme database demonstrates markedness in phonemes worldwide. Reviewing analyses of specific Portuguese segments, it proposes a phonemic inventory: 7 vowels, 18 consonants. The volume refines an analysis of Portuguese stress and reviews 2 acoustic studies thereof. It rejects rhythmic waves and syllable weight to determine degrees of tonicity. An algorithm divides strings of segments into syllables. The study also catalogues syllable onsets and codas. The final chapter advances a lexicon and morpheme boundaries to distinguish 8 morphemic affinities. Postscripts present the study’s database, FrePOP’s database, phonemic resolution, markedness and sonority.

Arthur Brakel has a Ph.D. in Portuguese and Linguistics from the University of Wisconsin as well as an M.A. in Portuguese and a B.A. in Latin American studies from the University of New Mexico. He has taught Spanish, Portuguese (language and literature) and Linguistics at Kent State University, SUNY-Albany, University of Michigan, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, and Albion College.