Raising production of pretonic mid vowels in Ouro Branco-MG

This paper describes the results of a research about the raising production of the pretonic mid vowels, this was carried out at the city of Ouro Branco, Minas Gerais State, Brazil. For this study, we selected eight stratified informants distributed by gender (male and female) and age (young and adults). Based on the Theory of Variation and Change, we analyzed the following linguistic factors: vowel of the stressed syllable, vowel between the vowel of the variable and the stressed one, manner of articulation of the preceding segment, place of articulation of the preceding segment, manner of articulation of the next segment and place of articulation of the next segment. We establish that in the city of Ouro Branco occurs vowel harmony triggered by the following high vowel, both for the raising of /e/, and for the raising of /o/. We conclude that for the raising of /o/, occurs also the process of vowel reduction. We also observed that there are lexical restrictions.