Monossílabos CV do português: leves e degenerados? Sonoridade vocálica e iteração de elementos na atribuição de peso e na preservação da minimalidade em português

Abstract

It has been argued whether Portuguese phonology comprehends a Minimality Condition imposed to all lexical entries of the language. The existence of a non-neglectable number of light CV monosyllables in this language has been interpreted as a clue of the irrelevance of such phonological constraint in this language. In this paper, we argue in favour of viewing Portuguese phonology as sensitive to minimality: with a very few exceptions only (basically corresponding to clitics), all words in Portuguese obey a mora-based minimality constraint which establishes that any word be at least bisyllabic or, if monosyllabic, a heavy syllable. Syllable weight is then assumed also as an important prosodic property of Portuguese. In addition to the traditional criterion to accept monosyllables as heavy (i. e., rhyme branching), a weight parametrization is postulated accepting that sonority and element iteration (within an Element Theory-based approach of the vowels segmental structure) do count also for syllable weight. Therefore, Portuguese monosyllables either through rhyme branching or the inherent weight of vowels with high degrees of sonority or iterated elements might be seen as compatible with the weight-sensitive minimality constraints that are functional in this language.