Variação prosódica de sentenças declarativas e interrogativas na fala de descendentes de imigrantes italianos de Santa Teresa, ES

Abstract

This sociolinguistic study, which is based on language variation and change and language contact theories, aims at describing and analyzing the intonation of declarative and interrogative sentences in phrasal structures uttered by descendants of Italian immigrants living in the urban area of the Santa Teresa town, in the state of Espírito Santo. This study aims at: a) assessing the effect of prosody of Italian immigration in the Portuguese language currently spoken by the descendants of these immigrants; b) contributing to the description of linguistic contacts in the prosodic level in the state. To achieve outstanding goals, the methodology and analytical tools were based on the AMPER Project in addition to the assumptions of the Theory of Variation and Change (Weinreich, Labov and HERZOG, 1968; Labov, 1972). For this research, therefore, 66 phrasal structures, which include three types of the Portuguese stress (oxytone, paroxytone and proparoxytone), were recorded. These phrases were spoken by eight (8) subjects, divided into the following social variables: sex / gender (male and female), age group (8-14 years old and 50+ years old), with up to 04 years of education. From graphs of the intonation patterns of the sentences, it was found that the intonation pattern of all the informants is similar: at the end of phrase, the intonation curve interrogative sentence rises in oxytone words, paroxytone and proparoxytones; already in the declarative sentence, in the same phrase, it presents a fall in the stressed syllables. However, in a perceptive / visual analysis, when comparing children and the elderly people, it is observed that the informants / female and male gender, age-range 8-14 years old, curves of intonation of declarative and interrogative sentences are approximate; already in informants over 50 years, two curves are separate, showing a variation of prosodic structure. This result points to a possible change in progress.