Eckhard Bick - VISL

2.2.4.6 The human factor: variations and spelling errors
In spite of repeated joint Luso-Brazilian efforts to establish common norms for
Portuguese orthography, the two language varieties, European and Brazilian
Portuguese, are slowly drifting apart, first of all in terms of pronunciation, but more
and more visibly also in spelling. Any tagger for Portuguese must take this into
consideration 37 .
• 1. 'c' and 'p' before 'c', 'ç' and 't' in etymologically Latin consonant clusters are
often dropped in Brazilian pronunciation and spelling, but always preserved in
Luso-Portuguese: activo - ativo, nocturno - noturno, acção - ação
• 2. Stressed vowels before 'n' and 'm' receive the circumflex in Brazil ("closed"
nasalised pronunciation), but acute in Luso-Portuguese ("open" pronunciation):
anônimo - anónimo, convênio - convénio
• 3. Luso-Portuguese 'mn' and 'nn' is in some words reduced to 'n' in Brazil:
conosco - connosco, indene - indemne
• 4. the [kw] - or [gw] - pronunciation of 'qu' or 'gu' before light vowels is marked
orthographically in Brazilian Portuguese with the umlaut sign: agüentar -
aguentar.
• 5. The open pronunciation of 'e' in 'eia' and 'eico' is only marked by accentuation
in Brazil: idéia - ideia
• 6. 'oi' alternates with 'ou', the last one being preferred in Brazil
• 7. There are a few differences in the accentuation of verbal endings, as in caiu -
caíu, amamos - amámos (preterito perfeito tense) perdôo - perdoo
Only for a few cases (especially in group 1) these variations are listed in the main
lexicon or the inflexion endings lexicon (most of group 7). In all other cases
PALMORF "knows" the Brazilian form, and tests for variation possibilities if a first
analysis fails. This test is based on simple string substitution, using the following
pairs:
(1)
Brazil c ç t c ç t ên êm ôn ôm ou gü qü n n éia éic
Europe cc cç ct pc pç pt én ém ón óm oi gu qu mn nn eia eic
Some spelling variation in my corpus is due to "phonetic spelling", i.e. an author's
attempt to "invent" a spelling variant for local-dialectal or colloquial-sociolectal
differences in pronunciation, as in 'r-dropping', where the [H]-pronunciation of
37 Many of the examples below would be made obsolete by a proposed orthographic reform abolishing many accents,
but - first - the reform isn't very likely to pass all bureaucratic and ideological hurdles any time soon, and - second - texts
would still mirror the older use in an unpredictable and personal way. Therefore, accent-adding or -removing heuristics
may be the most sensible solution.
- 55 -