The Role Of Phonology And Phonetics In Loanword Adaptation

Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral--Humboldt--Univ., 2008).

For many different reasons, speakers borrow words from other languages to fill gaps in their own lexical inventory. The past ten years have been characterized by a great interest among phonologists in the issue of how the nativization of loanwords occurs. The general feeling is that loanword nativization provides a direct window for observing how acoustic cues are categorized in terms of the distinctive features relevant to the L1 phonological system as well as for studying L1 phonological processes in action and thus to the true synchronic phonology of L1. The collection of essays presented in this volume provides an overview of the complex issues phonologists face when investigating this phenomenon and, more generally, the ways in which unfamiliar sounds and sound sequences are adapted to converge with the native language s sound pattern. This book is of interest to theoretical phonologists as well as to linguists interested in language contact phenomena."

While it is commonly assumed that languages epenthesize context-free default vowels, this book shows that in loanword adaptation, several strategies are found which interact intricately. Large loanword corpora in Shona, Sranan, Samoan and Kinyarwanda are analyzed statistically, and the patterns are modeled in a version of Optimality Theory which introduces constraints on autosegmental representations. The focus of this book is on English loans in Shona, providing an in-depth empirical and formal analysis of epenthesis in this language. The analysis of additional languages allows for solid typological generalizations. In addition, a diachronic study of epenthesis in Sranan provides insight into how insertion patterns develop historically. In all languages analyzed, default epenthesis exists alongside vowel harmony and spreading from adjacent consonants. While different languages prefer different strategies, these strategies are subject to the same set of constraints, however. In spreading, feature markedness plays an important role alongside sonority. We suggest universal markedness scales which combine with constraints on autosegmental configurations to model the patterns found in individual languages and at the same time to constrain the range of possible crosslinguistic variation.

This volume demonstrates that phonology is a subsystem of the mind/brain and explores the theoretical and practical (including medical) consequences of this insight. Written by American and European specialists at the cutting-edge of research in areas ranging from phonetics to neurology, the book addresses central questions relating to the cognitive status of phonological representation and phonetic implementation and the links between mental and physical representation of sound systems.

Review text: "This volume contains exciting and potentially valuable new contributions that attempts to expand our understanding of the role of phonology and phonetics in speech perception. This volume has much to contribute for not just linguistics, but psycholinguistics more generally, and so concepts contained in this volume should form the basis of many discussions in future speech perception studies."Andrew Blyth in: Linguist List 21.3465.

English-based Mandarin loanwords are commonly used in Chinese people’s daily lives. Mandarin Loanwords demonstrates how English phonemes map into Mandarin phonemes through Mandarin loanwords adaptation. The consonantal adaptations are the most important in the analyses, and vowel adaptation and tonal adaptation is also considered. Through the analysis, it is proven that the functions of phonology and phonetics play a significant role in Mandarin loanword adaptation, however the functions of other factors, such as semantic functions of Chinese characters and English orthography, are also discussed. Additionally, the phonetic symbolization of Chinese characters is mentioned.

This critical overview examines every aspect of the field including its history, key current research questions and methods, theoretical perspectives, and sociolinguistic factors. The authors represent leading proponents of every theoretical perspective. The book is a valuable resource for phonologists and a stimulating guide for their students.