"ONTEM EU NÃO SAIR": O GRAFEMA R FINAL EM VERBOS FLEXIONADOS COMO MARCADOR DE TONICIDADE

"ONTEM EU NÃO SAIR": THE GRAPHEME R IN FLEXED VERBS’ FINAL POSITION AS A MARKER OF TONICITY

Abstract

A recurrent orthographic phenomenon has been observed recently in Brazilian Portuguese: the occurrence of the grapheme R in final position of written flexed verbs (where there is no R in regular orthography nor in pronunciation). The present work aims at presenting the hypothesis that the occurrence of a final R in flexed verbs is not a case of hypercorrection, as it has been argued in the literature. In order to do so, we collected data by means of a controlled experiment carried out online in social media. It is our understanding that the final R in flexed verbs is being used as a diacritic marker of tonicity, such as graphic accents in Portuguese (´and ` for example). The grapheme R in flexed verbs occurs preferably in short oxytones (one or two syllables) and is produced generally by people above 25 years old that do not hold University education. The phenomenon seems to be related to a phonological perception of tonicity marked with that grapheme. It is often seen with oxytone words of different grammatical classes other than verbs, such as in the written words olar, vocer, sofar and cafer.