Le Paradigme Ascendent de l’FO dans les Fonctions Préindicatives Adverbiales en Portugais Brésilien
Cirineu Stein.

This paper presents the results of two perception tests, which aimed to identify, in Brazilian Portuguese, if a native user of the language, not trained in phonetics, is able to recognize a pre-indicative adverbial value, and, with the help of vocal synthesis techniques, which specifications of the prosodic components are responsible for the establishment of that value. Although the whole of the research focuses on nine adverbial semantic fields, only three of them will be discussed here. These three possible pre-indicative patterns of cause, consequence and finality show an ascending melodic curve in the final stressed vowel. Due to the similarity among the melodic curve contours in these three pre-indicative patterns, it is possible that a careless listener perceives them as ambiguous.