Aspects of Capeverdean phonology

The present phonological study of the Capeverdean language is comprised of four chapters. The first chapter is a brief description of the Capeverdean phonemic structure, establishing all of the phonemes and their major allophonic variations. In this section I also analyze syllable structure and phoneme alternations. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 represent a theoretical study, which draws on current work in Lexical Phonology as proposed by Kiparsky (1982), and Particle Phonology, as discussed in Schane (1984). In Chapter 2 I analyze the Capeverdean diminutives which involve complex phonological operations such as vowel deletion, vowel shift, and infixation of inh and z. In Chapter 3 I discuss vowel harmony by situating my analysis within the Lexical Phonology framework as proposed by Kiparsky (1982) and Roca (1983). Chapter 4 deals mainly with vowel shift. In my analysis of this phonological process, I adopt Schane's (1984) Particle Phonology model to account for the relationship among Capeverdean vowels.

By situating my analysis of some aspects of Capeverdean phonology within a theoretical framework, I hope to contribute to the advancement of the current debate in phonological analysis, while highlighting the complexities of the rules which govern the phonological realization of the Capeverdean speech. This is an important development in light of the linguistic tradition that views the Capeverdean language as mere simplification of Portuguese.