2018-06-062018-06-062014FRANKS, Suzanne; BARBOSA, Rommel. The importance of word-final vowel duration for non-native portuguese speaker identification by means of support vector machines. Revista Brasileira de Linguística Aplicada, Belo Horizonte, v. 14, n. 3, p. 689-712, 2014.e- 1984-6398http://repositorio.bc.ufg.br/handle/ri/15150This article studies the acoustic characteristics of some oral vowels in tonic syllables of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and which acoustic features are important for classifying native versus non-native speakers of BP. We recorded native and non-native speakers of BP for the purpose of the acoustic analysis of the vowels [a], [i], and [u] in tonic syllables. We analyzed the acoustic parameters of each segment using the Support Vector Machines algorithm to identify to which group, native or non-native, a new speaker belongs. When all of the variables were considered, a precision of 91% was obtained. The two most important acoustic cues to determine if a speaker is native or non-native were the durations of [i] and [u] in a word-final position. These findings can contribute to BP speaker identification as well as to the teaching of the pronunciation of Portuguese as a foreign language.engAcesso AbertoPhoneticsAcoustic phoneticsSecond language acquisitionBrazilian portugueseVowelsSupport vector machinesFonéticaFonética acústicaAquisição de segunda línguaPortuguês brasileiroVogaisMáquinas de vetores suporteArtigo10.1590/S1984-6398201400030000