Análise via Teoria da Otimidade das nasais finais do português brasileiro L2 por aprendizes anglófonos

Abstract

In Brazilian Portuguese (BP), the nasal codas [m, n] occur as a result of regressive assimilation: /N/ assimilates in place of articulation to a following bilabial or dental consonant (Bisol 2005; Cagliari 2007; Mattoso Camara Jr. 2007 [1970]). In the production in BP as a second language (L2) by adult learners who have English as their first language (L1), these nasal consonants can also be found in absolute word-final position as well as preceding heterorganic segments. I argue that the production of final [m, n] by L1 English-L2 BP learners in contexts not licensed in BP is not merely due to orthographic transfer, but it could be construed as the interaction of L1 transfer and markedness phenomena, which can be made explicit through a standard optimality-theoretic account (Prince; Smolensky 1993; McCarthy; Prince 1995).