1. Acquisition / learning of the phonological system of English 2. Interference of the phonological system of English and Portuguese, on a theoretical level 3. Interference at the level of pronunciation 4. Other possible reasons to explain deviations

1. Professor: Fabio Nunes
Aula 1: Introdução
Tópicos
Avançados em
Fonologia

2. Content
1. Acquisition / learning of the
phonological system of
English
2. Interference of the
phonological system of
English and Portuguese, on
a theoretical level
3. Interference at the level of
pronunciation
4. Other possible reasons to
explain deviations

3. #1
Acquisition / learning
of the phonological
system of English

5. The process of learning English as a foreign language for
speakers of Portuguese in Brazil, requires, for proper
understanding of the messages, the memory retention
through study, observation and experience in the target
language, grammar, lexicon, morphology, culture and
also the correct pronunciation of words. However, we
must consider that the interference of the mother
tongue on the target language is very frequent.
1. Acquisition / learning of the
phonological system of English

6. Learning by adults and children
 An adult has cognitive maturity and control of the
mother tongue. An adult may rely on the use of
grammar to learn a foreign language, for
instance;
 A child will make generalizations by inference.
1. Acquisition / learning of the
phonological system of English

7. Learning by adults and children
 To become fit in a foreign language can occur at
any age, in different ways, with different
purposes and at different stages of learning.
1. Acquisition / learning of the
phonological system of English

8. Importance of phonology
 The structure of a language consists traditionally in
phonology, grammar and semantics. The
requirements, however, are greater in the case of
phonology, because it would be an absolutely central
problem for a foreign language, a phoneme or group
of phonemes were pronounced incorrectly by the
learner, because communication with native people
could be affected.
1. Acquisition / learning of the
phonological system of English

9. Importance of phonology
 The “errors” serve to show that students are
developing the linguistic system of the foreign
language and one of the ways to learn is
making mistakes, because at the time the
student recognizes the error, the own student
tries to overcome it.
1. Acquisition / learning of the
phonological system of English

10. #2
Interference of the phonological
systems of English and Portuguese,
on a theoretical level

11. There are similarities and differences between
the two systems. The student will hear, at the
beginning of the learning of English language,
only the phonemes of their own language,
Portuguese.
2. Interference of the phonological
system of English…

12. The teacher has to discern which technique
should be used to introduce, first, the
auditory recognition of phonemes and then
guide the student to a conscious reproduction
that allows him to overcome the possible
difficulties.
2. Interference of the phonological
system of English…

13. The articulatory proximity can be one of the first
difficulties of the student when he tries to imitate
the sounds that are strange to their mother
tongue. This means that, upon hearing, the
student does not realize that a particular
phoneme does not belong to the phonological
system of his native language; when trying to
pronounce it, he uses the phonemes they know in
their own language.
2. Interference of the phonological
system of English…

14. 2. Interference of the phonological
system of English…
Examples
 The phoneme /ŋ/ may be pronounced by
Brazilians as /n/, in words like going or
thanks.
 Some phonemes, such as /p t k b d /, do not
occur in the final position in Portuguese,
while they can appear in the final position in
English words. So, Brazilians may add a
vowel sound to such words, like cap
(pronoucing /kœpi/ - ‘quépi’ - instead of
/kœp/)

15. #3
Interference
at the level of
pronunciation

16. 3. Interference at the level of
pronunciation
Acquiring the phonological system of the
target language involves not only to
recognize, but also internalize, reproduce and
control the sounds of the language and their
combinations. Thus, when learning a foreign
language, the interference of the mother
tongue is absolutely inevitable.

17. 3. Interference at the level of
pronunciation
Among the features of the mother tongue
causing phonological deviations, we can
mention the phonological particularities of
the target language, the different allophony,
and the phonetic proximity.

18. 3. Interference at the level of
pronunciation
Phonological particularities
The phonological particularities are those
which are part of the articulation system of
the language specifically compared with
one another.

19. 3. Interference at the level of
pronunciation
Example
Regular verbs in the English language (those with
termination -ed) have three possibilities for
pronunciation, according to phoneme before the
addition of the -ed:
 /t/ (voiceless)
 /d/ (voiced)
 /ɪd/ for verbs with the ending in /t/ and /d/.

20. 3. Interference at the level of
pronunciation
Different allophony
The different allophony between the two
languages ​​can lead the student to
pronounce the different realizations of
some English phonemes the way he is
used to do it in his own language

21. 3. Interference at the level of
pronunciation
Example
In English, the phonemes /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ can
cause problems for students who do not utilize
them in their own language. In Portuguese,
such phonemes are allophones of the
phonemes /t/ and /d/, only in some regions of
Brazil.

22. 3. Interference at the level of
pronunciation
Examples
 Tia /tʃiǝ/ (Fortaleza) or /tiǝ/ (Juazeiro do Norte)
 Dia /dʒiǝ/ or /diǝ/
 DJ /dʒidʒei/ or /didʒei/

23. 3. Interference at the level of
pronunciation
Phonetic proximity
The phonetic proximity, as the word says, a
phoneme is of the mother tongue which has a
very close articulation to the phoneme of the
foreign language that is not realized in the
mother tongue.

24. 3. Interference at the level of
pronunciation
Example
The English phonemes /θ/ and /ð/ (which
are not part of the articulatory system of the
Portuguese language), are replaced by /t/,
/f/ and /s/, for the voiceless phoneme /θ/,
and /d/, /v/ and /z/, for voiced phoneme /ð/.

25. 3. Interference at the level of
pronunciation
Examples
 Thanks /tæŋks/ instead of /θæŋks/
 Three /fri/ instead of /θri/
 Mother /mʌdər/ instead of /mʌðər/

26. #4
Other possible reasons to explain
deviations

27. Writing
A kind of interference that seems to be quite
obvious is the writing. Both English and
Portuguese languages use the Latin alphabet
and, at first glance, it seems easy to read the
words in both languages​​.
4. Other possible reasons to
explain deviations

28. Extralinguistic aspects
The extralinguistic aspects inform about the
speaker: if the speaker belongs to our relations,
if his speech is formal or informal, whether it is
female or male, whether child or adult, what is
his education and even what is the
socioeconomic level to which he belongs.
4. Other possible reasons to
explain deviations

29. Source
SANT’ANNA, M. As interferências fonológicas no inglês
como língua estrangeira para os falantes do português
do Brasil. In: Dialogia, v. 2, Outubro/2003.