Stressed Vowels in São Tomé and Príncipe Portuguese (STPP)

This paper describes 2 acoustic correlates of oral stressed vowels in Portuguese of São Tomé and Príncipe (STPP): First formant (F1) and second formant (F2). Based on data from Escudero et al. (2009), we compared STPP with urban varieties of Brazilian (BP) and European Portuguese (EP), such as those spoken in São Paulo and Lisbon, respectively. Based on the analysis of 1,776 occurrences of 74 lexical items produced by 6 male and 6 female participants, we attested the presence of 8 stressed vowels in STPP [i, e, ɛ, a, ə, ɔ, o, u] – a different result from Escudero et al. (2009), who found 7 oral stressed vowels in BP and EP [i, e, ɛ, a, ɔ, o, u]. [ə] as an allophone of /a/, in STPP, is also accompanied by a reduction in the acoustic space of this variety, which, in general, presents a more compressed acoustic space than BP and EP. This finding differentiates STPP – a minoritized Portuguese variety – from the urban varieties of BP and EP in question, as it produces a unique outcome among documented Portuguese varieties that lead to the observation of some phonological processes in stress position.