Portugues

Abstract

ABSTRACT

In this article we present and discuss the way in which 6th grade Mozambican students, who have Emakhuwa as their mother tongue, perceive the phonological contrasts of occlusive consonants of Portuguese as a second language, taking into account that, unlike Portuguese, Emakhuwa does not present, in their phonological system, the sound phonemes / b, d, g /, having only the deaf phonemes / p, t, k / (cf. SITOE & NGUNGA, 2000; NGUNGA & FAKIR, 2011).

We specifically intend to describe the perceptual-auditory performance of occlusive consonants in Portuguese for 6th grade students who have Emakhuwa as their mother tongue. To help understanding, we created a control group that uses Portuguese as their mother tongue. In the scope of data collection, a test was set up to assess the perceptual and auditory performance of the participants from the identification activity, also known as forced choice task, and involves phonological contrasts of Portuguese in the syllabic Onset position. Among our conclusions, we highlight the fact that participants who have Emakhuwa as their mother tongue and Portuguese as a second language, had difficulties in identifying phonological contrasts that involve sound phonemes when confusing them with the deaf consonants that are available in their system phonological. Another noteworthy aspect in the scope of the conclusions is related to the fact that the participants in the experimental group performed numerically lower than the participants in the control group.

 KEYWORDS Speech perception; Phonological contrasts; Second language