Evaluation of Progressive Palatalization by University Students

Abstract

This research aims to investigate, based on tests of attitudes and linguistic judgments, the social significance of the variants involved in the process of progressive palatalization of the alveolar stops /t/ and /d/, as in linguistic forms of the type ‘mui[t]o ~ mui[tʃ]o’ and ‘gos[t]o ~ gos[tʃ]o’ (I like), by university students from Alagoas. Sociolinguistic studies with spontaneous speech production indicate that this linguistic process suffers negative social pressures (Henrique; Hora, 2012; Mota; Rollemberg, 1997; Oliveira, 2017; Santos, 1996; Souza Neto, 2014), being avoided by younger people, more educated and female. Considering this mapping in the Northeast, this research investigates how the palatalized variant is evaluated in the university environment. To this end, the study takes place through experiments developed with the matched-guise technique (Campbell-Kibler, 2009; Irvine, 2001; Lambert et al., 1960), with the aim of analyzing how subjective aspects of the speaker's identity can interfere in linguistic judgments and highlight socially established values. Therefore, a perception and judgment questionnaire was applied, via electronic form, to 200 university students from the State University of Alagoas - UNEAL. The results suggest a difference in the social meaning of the palatalized variant, depending on the phonetic/phonological context preceding the stop consonant, whether fricative, as in words like ‘gosto’ (I like), or semivowel, as in ‘oito’ (eight). It can be stated that, despite negative evaluation in both cases, when palatalization occurs in a semivowel environment, the negative judgment is more prominent.