Звукови съответствия на българския звук [ъ] в португалския език

The paper discusses the Bulgarian central vowel [ъ] and its sound correspondences in Portuguese. The central vowels of the two languages are contrasted by means of acoustic, auditory and functional analyses of the vowels in stressed and in unstressed position. The instrumental analysis shows that the acoustic parameters of the Bulgarian central vowel [ъ] are very similar to the parameters of the Portuguese central vowel [ə] in stressed position. In unstressed position, on the other hand, there are two vowels, which are similar to the Bulgarian [ъ],the vowels [ə] and [α]. This contrast is accounted for by the fact that in unstressed position the other central vowel of the Portuguese system [α] (whose variants almost overlap with the variants of [ə]), moves upwards and takes a more centralized position. The auditory analysis confirms the results of the spectral analysis, i. e. in the stressed position [ъ] is identified with [ə] while in unstressed position it is identified both with [ə] and [α].