THE LEXICAL AND PHONOLOGICAL VARIATION IN LIBRAS IN THE EXPRESSION OF THE CONCEPT „ELEVATOR‟

Abstract

This work aims (1) to investigate the lexical and phonetic-phonological variation through the reanalysis of 21 productions referring to the concept ‘elevator’, originally collected by Xavier and F. Barbosa (2017) from 12 deaf signers from the state of São Paul, and (2) to compare our results with those of the aforementioned authors. To achieve this, unlike the previous study, the reanalyzed productions were first grouped by a deaf signer who uses Libras as her first language into different lexical variants based on their iconicity (motivation) and not on their formal similarity. Subsequently, the variant and stable phonetic-phonological aspects in the productions of each lexical variant were analyzed by their comparison. As a result, we observed a differece in the number of lexical variants in both studies, but similarities in the results related to the variable and stable phonetic-phological features.