Joaquim BRANDAO DE CARVALHO

My research activities are conducted with a focus on three key divides that run through the field of phonology:

1.         Structure / melody

Following a long-term research which aims at reducing a number of phonological categories, such as laryngeal and sonority features, to structure, I am exploring the borderline between structure and melodic material. After having obtained interesting results in the field of phonotactic constraints on consonantal clusters in an article published in 2017, I am currently extending this research to the particular cases of complex onsets (why are tl-onsets disfavoured?) and vowel harmony (joint work with Noam Faust).

2.         Representation / computation

Another topic has recently become a privileged theme of research: to what extent can phonological theory ultimately conciliate representations and computation? Following on from Kiparsky's (1993) "Blocking in Non-derived environments", I assume that phonology is inherently representational insofar as the inner workings of the phonological module are considered; only interaction between phonology and morphosyntax (through affixation, sandhi, etc.) can yield derivation. This line of research was summarized in an article published in 2021, and will be pursued in close association with a second question: can representational approaches eliminate the need for opaque derivations, and thus for serial theories?

3.         Weight / timing

A third research activity deals with how phonological representations must and can disentangle weight from length, thereby unifying the contributions of moraic phonology and of the theories of the X-skeleton from the 1980s. This study will be conducted with a focus on Romance stress systems, especially Portuguese and Spanish.

Some representative articles of these last ten years are listed (and can be downloaded) below.