Conceição Cunha

• The present study is concerned with the production and perception of the stop consonant clusters /pt/ and /kt/ as well as CVC-Sequences /pVt/ and /kVt/ in European and Brazilian Portuguese (EP and BP, respectively). European and Brazilian Portuguese have the same syllable structure (Bisol 1999: 731, Mateus/d’Andrade 2000: 39), but are postlexically affected by contrary phenomena. After the occurence of phonological processes such as vowel reduction and deletion in European clusters and vowel epenthesis in Brazilian consonant clusters, theThe present study is concerned with the production and perception of the stop consonant clusters /pt/ and /kt/ as well as CVC-Sequences /pVt/ and /kVt/ in European and Brazilian Portuguese (EP and BP, respectively). European and Brazilian Portuguese have the same syllable structure (Bisol 1999: 731, Mateus/d’Andrade 2000: 39), but are postlexically affected by contrary phenomena. After the occurence of phonological processes such as vowel reduction and deletion in European clusters and vowel epenthesis in Brazilian consonant clusters, the difference between lexical consonant clusters and CVC-sequences would be diminished in both varieties, so that EP would realize both as CC, while BP would realize both as CVC. In order to test whether clusters and CVC-sequences can be distinguished in production and perception, we discuss a physiological experiment and a perceptual study with participants of both varieties. The results show less overlap in BP than in EP. The reason for which is seen in the perception of intervocalic epenthetic elements even in lexical clusters in BP and more consonant clusters in EP.…