Paradigmatic correspondences in the Brazilian Portuguese verbal vowel system

Abstract

In this paper, we reanalyse the alternation in the Brazilian Portuguese verbal system called verbal vowel harmony (VH), which applies to verb stems in the second and third conjugations (e.g., bebér to drink' > bébo I drink'; segír to follow' > sígo I follow'). We pose the following questions concerning VH: (i) Is it a synchronic process? (ii) Does it exhibit paradigmatic effects? and (iii) How can it be described in Optimality Theory? To answer question (i), we present a corpus of BP dictionarized verbs in the third person and results from empirical tests that evaluate acceptability/productivity in the conjugation of pseudo-verbs. Concerning question (ii), we show that a paradigmatic correspondence between verbal forms in BP accounts for misapplication patterns. Answering question (iii), we offer a description of the process in line with Transderivational Correspondence Theory (Benua 1997). © 2007 Akadémaiai Kiadó.