Variação da lateral palatal: uma descrição sociolinguística na fala de estudantes da Universidade Federal de Sergipe

Abstract

The variation of the palatal lateral [ʎ] constitutes a phenomenon of great interest for research on the phonetic and phonological diversity of Brazilian Portuguese. This process occurs mainly in intervocalic position, is orthographically represented by the digraph lh, and presents different realizations, such as: i) palatal lateral [ʎ] “trabalha”; ii) palatalization [lʲ] “trabalia”; iii) vocalization [y] “trabaia”; iv) alveolar/dental lateral [l] “trabala”; and v) phonetic zero [Ø] “fio” (Cristófaro Silva, 2024; Freitag, 2010; Freire, 2011). Previous studies point to linguistic and sociodemographic constraints as important factors conditioning the variation of this phenomenon (Madureira, 1987; Castro, 2006; Brandão, 2007; Oliveira; Mota, 2007; Soares, 2008, 2009; Pinheiro, 2009; Aguilera, 2009; Freire, 2011, 2016, 2024; Ferreira, 2011; Santos, 2012; Silva; Carvalho, 2014; Santos, 2018; Plaza, 2019; Santos et al., 2021; Hora; Schwindt, 2022; Lima, 2024; Muller, 2025, among others). Despite advances in the description of palatal lateral variation, analyses of its behavior in samples composed exclusively of speakers belonging to a single level of schooling remain limited, since most studies focus on comparisons between speakers with higher and lower levels of education. In addition, research on this phenomenon is still incipient in Sergipe, where investigations based on reading and picturenaming tasks predominate (Freitag, 2010; Santiago, 2017). In this context, the general objective of this dissertation was to describe the variation of the palatal lateral in the speech of university students at the Universidade Federal de Sergipe (UFS), in light of the theory of linguistic variation and change (Weinreich; Labov; Herzog, 2006 [1968]; Labov, 2008 [1972]), contributing to the understanding of the embedding problem by analyzing how linguistic and sociodemographic variables manifest and interact in the university context. The analysis focused on the non-standard realizations of the palatal lateral [y], [l], and [Ø], considering the linguistic factors of preceding and following phonetic context, stress, grammatical class, and speech monitoring, as well as the sociodemographic factors sex/gender (female and male), time in the program (beginning and end of the course), and displacement (I: students from the Metropolitan Region of Aracaju; II: students from the interior of Sergipe who commute daily to UFS; III: students from the interior who moved to the Metropolitan Region of Aracaju during their studies; and IV: students from Alagoas and Bahia residing in the Metropolitan Region of Aracaju). The corpus consists of 73 sociolinguistic interviews from the Deslocamentos 2020 sample of the Banco de Dados Falares Sergipanos (Freitag, 2013). Data treatment followed the quantitative approach of Variationist Sociolinguistics, with descriptive analysis based on the percentage distribution of occurrences. A total of 4,490 occurrences were identified, of which about 6% were classified as non-standard. The results indicate that non-standard realizations are more strongly associated with linguistic variables, especially empty preceding context and the vocalic contexts [ɔ] and [ɛ]. After data amalgamation, the empty context remained with the highest percentage of non-standard realization, followed by the vocalic contexts [o] and [e]. In the following context, sandhi and empty contexts showed categorical application, followed by the vocalic context [i]. After amalgamation, sandhi and empty contexts remained with the highest percentages, followed by the group of high front vowels [i, ĩ, ɪ]. Regarding stress, the contexts not applicable and post-tonic stood out; in grammatical class, pronouns and interjections; and in speech monitoring, the final 30 minutes of the interviews. Sociodemographic variables showed a fairly balanced percentage distribution of non-standard realizations, with only the displacement variable presenting a slightly higher percentage among students in Displacement II, who commute daily from the interior to UFS.