As realizações fonéticas de /R/ em português europeu: análise de um corpus dialetal e implicações no sistema fonológico

In this paper, we look at one of the most challenging subjects of both phonetics and phonology: rhotics. Our goal is two-fold: first, we analyze a corpus of spoken European Portuguese (EP), in an attempt to contribute to the so far sparse treatment of rhotics in the known descriptions of this language, and find that fricatives, contrary to those descriptions, are more abundant than trills; second, we make some reflections on rhotics as a natural class, a very problematic notion in this case, since the elements that are usually said to constitute a class of rhotics seem to have no shared features among them. We argue that, instead, in order to include the rhotics of EP in one natural class, historical evolution and allophony are to be looked at.