LabFon - Laboratory of Phonetics and Phonology

LabPhon Website

 

The Phonetics and Phonology Lab (LabFon - Laboratório de Fonética e Fonologia) is a research group that was founded in the 1960s in the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon. In 2005-2006 the group became a part of Onset (Center for Language Studies, FLUL) and in 2007 the group has joined the Center of Linguistics of the University of Lisbon. In line with the past history of the Lab, nowadays LabFon pursues its activities with three aims: (1) research (especially laboratory-phonology oriented), (2) education/training (at the undergraduate and graduate levels), and (3) services to the community.
In the last three years, two main lines of research have been developed: the study of frequency patterns in the phonology and phonetics of the language, and the study of the production and perception of prosody (prosodic phrasing, intonation, and rhythm). 
Knowledge of frequency patterns has been shown to be crucial to the characterization of language usage, the establishing of lexical representations, or the emergence and development of grammar. Available frequency data for phonological units and patterns in Portuguese was scarce, non-replicable and corpus dependent. The line of research initiated in 2007 aimed at providing large-scale frequency information for phonological units and patterns from the feature to the prosodic word level, together with tools and databases, that allowed a description of Portuguese from the frequency perspective and enabled to test hypothesis about frequency effects in adult and child grammar, as well as language processing.
European Portuguese is one of the languages which is particularly interesting to the study of prosody and of the perception and production of prosodic properties. This is due to the fact that (i) European Portuguese is different from other Romance languages in terms of the properties it displays in various prosodic levels, such as the Prosodic Word or the Phonological Phrase, (ii) its intonation stands out from the rest of the Romance languages due to the scarcity of pitch accents and its overall prosodic phrasing, and (iii) it has a rare combination of syllabic and accentual rhythmic properties, within Romance. The presence of both Romance and Germanic-like properties in the prosody of the language raises challenging questions for language acquisition (under the prosodic bootstrapping hypothesis) and for language typology. The research developed at LabFon aims at tackling some of these questions in the broader context of cross-linguistic research, focusing on prosodic variation, the acquisition of prosody and the role of prosody in language development and language processing. To this end, the group set up in 2010 the Lisbon Baby Lab.

 

Capítulo de Livro
Frota, S., & Name, C. (2017). Questões de perceção em língua materna. In A aquisição de língua materna e não materna. Questões gerais e dados do Português (M. J. Freitas and A. L. Santos, pp. 35-50). Berlin: Language Science Press. Retrieved from http://langscipress.org/
Frota, S., & Prieto, P. (2015). Intonation in Romance: systemic similarities and differences. In Intonation in Romance (S. Frota & P. Prieto, pp. 392-418). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Frota, S., Cruz, M., Svartman, F., Collischonn, G., Fonseca, A., Serra, C., et al. (2015). Intonational variation in Portuguese: European and Brazilian varieties. In Intonation in Romance (S. Frota & P. Prieto, pp. 235-283). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Frota, S., Cruz, M., Matos, N., & Vigário, M. (2016). Early Prosodic Development: Emerging intonation and phrasing in European Portuguese. In Interdisciplinary approaches to intonational grammar in Ibero-Romance (M. E. Armstrong, N. Henriksen & M. M. Vanrell, pp. 295-324). Philadelphia, USA: John Benjamins. http://doi.org/10. 1075/ihll.6.14fro
Oliveira, P., Cruz, M., Paulino, N., & Vigário, M. (2017). Glide insertion to break a hiatos across words in European Portuguese: The role of prosodic, geographic and sociolinguistic factors. In Studies on Variation in Portuguese. (Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 14) (P. Barbosa and M. da C. de Paiva and C. Rodrigues, pp. 50-79). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing. http://doi.org/10. 1075/ihll.14
Frota, S., Prieto, P., & Elordieta, G. (2020). Iberia. In Carlos Gussenhoven & Aoju Chen (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Language Prosody (pp. 251-270). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Vigário, M., Pires, C., Martins, F., & Frota, S. (2019). Phonological metrics in author identification and characterization. In Ernestina Carrilho, Ana Maria Martins, Sandra Pereira & João Paulo Silvestre (eds.) Estudos Linguísticos e Filológicos Oferecidos a Ivo Castro (pp. 1561-1581). Lisboa: Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa.
Oliveira, P., Cruz, M., Paulino, N., & Vigário, M. (2017). Glide insertion to break a hiatus across words in European Portuguese. In Studies on Variation in Portuguese (pp. 50-79). John Benjamins Publishing Company. http://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.14.02oli
Frota, S., & Moraes, J. (2016). Intonation of European and Brazilian Portuguese. In W. Leo Wetzels, João Costa & Sergio Menuzzi (eds.). The Handbook of Portuguese Linguistics, First Edition (pp. 141-166). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Armstrong, M. E., & Cruz, M. (2014). The Intonational Phonology of Peninsular Spanish and European Portuguese. In P. Amaral & A. Carvalho (eds.). Portuguese/Spanish Interfaces. Diachrony, synchrony, and contact (Vol. 1–151-174). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Frota, S. (2012). A focus intonational morpheme in European Portuguese: Production . In G. Elordieta & P. Prieto (eds). Prosody and Meaning (pp. 163-196). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Frota, S., Elordieta, G., & Prieto, P. (2011). Introduction. In S. Frota, G. Elordieta & P. Prieto (eds.) Prosodic Categories: Production, Perception and Comprehension (pp. 1-15). Dordrecht: Springer.
Cruz, M., Sendra, V. C., Castelo, J., & Frota, S. (2022). Asking questions across Portuguese varieties. In M. Cruz & S. Frota (Eds.), Prosodic variation (with)in languages: Intonation, phrasing and segments (series Studies in Phonetics and Phonology, edited by Martin J. Ball and Pascal van Lieshout) (pp. 36-70). Equinox Publishing. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360321546_Asking_questions_across_Portuguese_varieties
Cruz, M., & Frota, S. (2022). Introduction. In M. Cruz & S. Frota (Eds.), Prosodic variation (with)in languages: Intonation, phrasing and segments (series Studies in Phonetics and Phonology, edited by Martin J. Ball and Pascal van Lieshout) (pp. 1-6). Equinox Publishing. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360321546_Asking_questions_across_Portuguese_varieties
Book Edition
(2011). Prosodic Categories: Production, Perception and Comprehension. (S. Frota, Elordieta, G., & Prieto, P., Eds.). Dordrecht: Springer-Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory series.
Artigo em Atas
Cruz, M., & Frota, S. (2014). Rhythm in central-southern varieties of European Portuguese: production and perception . In In Textos Selecionados do XXIX Encontro Nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística (E., Bascelar-do-Nascimento and M. F. and Mota, M. A. and Segura, L. and Mendes, A. (eds), Vol. III, pp. 213-230). Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.
Cruz, M., & Frota, S. (2013). Textos Seleccionados. In In Textos Seleccionados do XXVIII Encontro Nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística. . Lisboa: APL.
Cruz, M., & Frota, S. (2012). Para a prosódia do foco em variedades do Português Europeu. In Textos Seleccionados do XXVII Encontro Nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística (pp. 196-216). A. Costa, C. Flores & N. Alexandre. Lisboa: APL.
Cruz, M., & Frota, S. (2011). Prosódia dos tipos frásicos em variedades do Português Europeu: produção e percepção. In XXVI ENAPL. Textos Seleccionados 2010 (pp. 208-22). M. A. Costa, I. Falé & P. Barbosa. Lisboa: APL.
Cruz, M., & Frota, S. (2010). O Sintagma Entoacional na Gaguez – evidências do PE. In Textos Seleccionados.
Vigário, M., Frota, S., & Martins, F. (2010). A frequência que conta na aquisição da fonologia: types ou tokens? In Textos Seleccionados. In .. XXV Encontro Nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística.
Frota, S., & Matos, N. (2009). In Textos Seleccionados. In XXIV Encontro Nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística. (pp. 281-295). Lisboa: APL/Colibri.
Frota, S., Galves, C., & Vigário, M. (2008). Ler a Fonologia: do Português Clássico ao Português Moderno. In Textos Seleccionados. XXIII Encontro Nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística. Lisboa: APL/Colibri (pp. 193-206). XXIII Encontro Nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística. Lisboa: APL/Colibri.
Costa, T., Freitas, M. J., Frota, S., Martins, F., & Vigário, M. (2007). Sobre o PA na periferia esquerda da palavra. In Textos seleccionados (pp. 315-328). XXII Encontro Nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística. Lisboa: APL.
Freitas, M. J., Frota, S., Vigário, M., & Martins, F. (2006). Efeitos prosódicos e efeitos de frequência no desenvolvimento silábico em Português Europeu. In Textos seleccionados (pp. 397-412). XXI Encontro Nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística, org. F. Oliveira & J. Barbosa. Lisboa: APL.
Vigário, M., Martins, F., & Frota, S. (2006). A ferramenta FreP e a frequência de tipos silábicos e de classes de segmentos no Português. In Textos Seleccionados do XXI Encontro Nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística, org. F (pp. 675-687). Oliveira & J. Barbosa. Lisboa: APL.
Cruz, M., & Frota, S. (2013). On the relation between intonational phrasing and pitch accent distribution. In Evidence from European Portuguese varieties. In Proceedings of the 14th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech.
Correia, S., Frota, S., Butler, J., & Vigário, M. (2013). Word stress perception in European Portuguese. In Proceedings of the 14th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2013).
Frota, S., Butler, J., Correia, S., Severino, C., & Vigário, M. (2012). Pitch First, Stress Next? Prosodic Effects on Word Learning in a Intonation Language. In Proceedings of the 36th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development edited by Alia K. Biller, Esther Y. Chung, and Amelia E. Kimball (pp. 190-201). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Filipe, M. G., Vicente, S. G., & Frota, S. (2012). Aquisição prosódica entre os 4 e os 18 anos de idade [Prosodic acquisition from 4 to 18 years]. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference of Psychology and Education (pp. 444-458).