Vowel Reduction for Some European Portuguese Speakers

This chapter examines vowel reduction among four European Portuguese speakers, focusing on mora loss and mora restoration as key processes. While traditional descriptions suggest a uniform reduction pattern, this chapter reveals individual variation in how unstressed vowels are realized. Mora loss causes unstressed vowels to lose their moras. High vowels /i/ and /u/ become their non-moraic counterparts, while mid vowels (/e, ɛ, o, ɔ/) may undergo centralization, raising, or even deletion. The low vowel /a/ further undergoes feature loss, reducing to schwa. Additionally, deletion occurs to some speakers, particularly for unstressed high glides. Significantly, some speakers exhibit mora restoration, selectively regaining moras for certain non-moraic heads, leading to diverse reduction patterns. The chapter emphasizes the role of acoustic analysis in uncovering subtle phonetic differences, showing that duration is a key factor in distinguishing moraic from non-moraic heads. The findings highlight the complexity of vowel reduction systems and suggest that phonological theories must account for speaker-specific variation and prosodic influences.