The effect of phonological complexity in the acquisition of vowel reduction in European Portuguese

The target system. The vowel system in European Portuguese (EP) is complex in terms of number of processes affecting the overt output forms of words in the language. Within this set of processes, the one that gives raise to vowel reduction is highly productive in the grammar and it generally applies to all vowels in unstressed position (cf. Mateus & Andrade 2000): (i) /a / reduces to [å]; (ii) /E, e / reduce to [ˆ]; (iii) /ç, o / reduce to [u]. This process generates both allophonic and allomorphic variation in the language; see the contrasts in the following pairs of words: (a) [sáku] ‘bag ’ versus [såkí¯u] ‘bag-diminutive’; (b)[médu] ‘fear ’ versus [mˆdrózu] ‘frightened’; (c) [lóbu] ‘wolf ’ versus [lubí¯u] ‘wolf-diminutive’ The problem. The effect of allophonic and allomorphic variation in the acquisition of the EP vowel system is a relevant topic for the debate on the nature of early phonological representations: (i) in the case all vowels match the target, one find evidence against early abstract phonological representations; (ii) in the case of a mismatch between the target forms and the children’s productions, it is important to investigate the emergent repair strategies in order to observe whether the variants are (or not) instances of the abstract phonological vowel in the target; in this last case, one would find evidence to postulate the presence of early abstract representations in the child’s system. Research on phonological alternations is scarc