A Structural Account of Root Node Deletion in Loanword Phonology

AbstractParadis and LaCharité (1996, 1997) have proposed a model of loanword adaptation, couched within theTheory of Constraints and Repair Strategies(Paradis 1988a,b). One of the mechanisms used in their model, called the Threshold Principle, first advanced by Paradis, Lebel, and LaCharité (1993), poses problems. This principle, whose implementation implies arithmetic counting, goes counter to standard views of generative phonology against counting. In this article, an analysis of deletion contexts found in loanwords which accounts for the data observed on structural grounds only is developed without any appeal to arithmetic counting. Based on the adaptation of French rising diphthongs and nasal vowels in two languages, Fula and Kinyarwanda, it is argued that an analysis based solely on the segmental representations of the foreign forms to adapt and the segmental and syllabic constraints of the borrowing language is sufficient to make correct predictions regarding the adaptation patterns found in these languages.

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Loanword Adaptation in Lama: Testing the TCRS Model

The Canadian Journal of Linguistics / La revue canadienne de linguistique ◽

10.1017/s0008413100017163 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 42 (4) ◽

pp. 415-463 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Charles H. Ulrich

Keyword(s):

Theory Of Constraints ◽

Loanword Adaptation ◽

Source Language ◽

Phonological Constraints ◽

Data Support ◽

French And English

AbstractWhen words are borrowed from one language into another, they are often adapted to conform with the phonological constraints of the borrowing language. This article looks at the adaptation of six hundred loanwords from French and English into Lama in light of the predictions of the Theory of Constraints and Repair Strategies. The Lama data support the Minimality Principle, which predicts that ill-formed structures will be repaired as economically as possible, and the Preservation Principle, which predicts that epenthesis will be favoured over deletion. They also support the claim that the form in which loanwords are stored in the borrowing language is equivalent to the output of the phonology of the source language, even when that includes segments which are ill-formed in the borrowing language. However, the Lama data do not support the Threshold Principle, which predicts deletion when adaptation would be too costly.

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Perceptual similarity in loanword adaptation: English postvocalic word-final stops in Korean

Phonology ◽

10.1017/s0952675703004524 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 20 (2) ◽

pp. 219-273 ◽

Cited By ~ 116

Author(s):

Yoonjung Kang

Keyword(s):

Strong Evidence ◽

Large Body ◽

English Word ◽

Perceptual Similarity ◽

Loanword Adaptation ◽

Loanword Phonology

When an English word with a postvocalic word-final stop is adapted to Korean, a vowel is variably inserted after the final stop. Vowel insertion in this position is puzzling not only because of its variability but also because of the fact that it is not motivated by the native phonology in any obvious way. After providing a thorough description of the vowel-insertion pattern on the basis of a survey of a large body of data, the paper proposes that vowel insertion is motivated to improve the perceptual similarity between the English input and the Korean output as well as to obey a morphophonemic restriction in Korean. The paper provides strong evidence that non-contrastive phonetic details of lending or borrowing languages are relevant in the process of loanword adaptation and at the same time suggests a richer view of loanword phonology, one which involves interaction of phonetic, phonemic and morphophonemic factors.

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Loanword adaptation in Esperanto

Język. Komunikacja. Informacja ◽

10.14746/jki.2018.13.5 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 72-80

Author(s):

Karina Oliveira, Gonçalves de Souza de

Keyword(s):

Theoretical Basis ◽

Loanword Adaptation ◽

Original Language ◽

Youth Organization ◽

Loanword Phonology

This research investigated the phonological directions by which new roots are incorporated into Esperanto. Words were selected from the following magazines: Kontakto, the official magazine of the Tutmonda Esperantista Junulara Organizo (TEJO – World Esperanto Youth Organization), which was first published in 1963 and has subscribers in over 90 countries, and Esperanto, the official magazine of the Universala Esperanto-Asocio (UEA – Esperanto Universal Association), which was first released in 1905 and has readers in 115 countries, in addition to a technological terminology list (Nevelsteen, 2012) and to words not quoted in dictionaries but published in a list on the blog <http://vortaroblogo.blogspot.com.br/2009/09/nepivajvortoj-i.html>. Words were collected from 13 different languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, English, Japanese, Komi, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Sanskrit and Swahili. The theoretical basis that guided this analysis was Loanword Phonology, mainly the works of Calabrese & Wetzels (2009), Vendelin & Peperkamp (2006), Paradis (1988), Kang (2011), Friesner (2009), Menezes (2013), Chang (2008), Kenstowicz & Suchato (2006) and Roth (1980). An analysis of the corpus showed that words can be adapted by their phonetic form as well as by their root’s orthographic form from the original language. Furthermore, we observed that long vowels were, for the most part, adapted as simple vowels; and some words are present in two synchronic variations.

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Phonetics or phonology: asymmetries in loanword adaptations; French and German mid front rounded vowels in Japanese

ZAS Papers in Linguistics ◽

10.21248/zaspil.42.2005.275 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 42 ◽

pp. 117-135

Author(s):

Katrin Dohlus

Keyword(s):

Adaptation Process ◽

Language Play ◽

Loanword Adaptation ◽

Source Language ◽

Loanword Phonology

It is one of the most highly debated issues in loanword phonology whether loanword adaptations are phonologically or phonetically driven. This paper addresses this issue and aims at demonstrating that only the acceptance of both a phonological as well as a phonetic approximation stance can adequately account for the data found in Japanese. This point will be exemplified with the adaptation of German and French mid front rounded vowels in Japanese. It will be argued that the adaptation of German /oe/ and /ø/ as Japanese /e/ is phonologically grounded, whereas the adaptation of French /oe/ and /ø/ as Japanese /u/ is phonetically grounded. This asymmetry in the adaptation process of German and French mid front rounded vowels and further examples of loans in Japanese lead to the only conclusion that both strategies of loanword adaptation occur in languages. It will be shown that not only perception, but also the influence of orthography, of conventions and the knowledge of the source language play a role in the adaptation process.

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Vowel Quality Cues to Variable Nasal Adaptation in Mandarin Loanword Phonology

Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology ◽

10.3765/amp.v7i0.4486 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 7 ◽

Author(s):

Ho-Hsin Huang ◽

Yen-Hwei Lin

Keyword(s):

Experimental Data ◽

Vowel Quality ◽

Multiple Sources ◽

Loanword Adaptation ◽

Loanword Phonology ◽

Wide Range ◽

Phonetic Cues ◽

Range Of Variation ◽

Do So ◽

Perceived Duration

Variation in phonological adaptation has not always been analysed in detail, but some studies on Standard Mandarin (SM) loanword phonology, where a seemingly wide range of variation is present, have started to uncover cases where instances of variable adaptation are contextually conditioned (e.g. Hsieh, Kenstowicz, & Mou, 2009 on SM nasal codas; Lin 2008 on SM vowels). Our study presents corpus and experimental data in which intervocalic English nasals are variably adapted as either geminates or singletons in SM. We argue that the perceived duration and nasalization of the English prenasal vowels condition which variant is preferred in SM, and suggest how these vowel quality cues are processed and mapped onto SM phonological representation by monolingual and bilingual SM speakers. This study contributes to a better understanding of which phonetic cues modulate variation in adapted forms and how they do so. It also showcases multiple sources for variable loanword adaptation: linguistic contexts, auditory vs. non-auditory inputs, and monolingual vs. bilingual differences.

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Preservation and minimality in loanword adaptation

Journal of Linguistics ◽

10.1017/s0022226797006786 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 33 (2) ◽

pp. 379-430 ◽

Cited By ~ 83

Author(s):

CAROLE PARADIS ◽

DARLENE LACHARITÉ

Keyword(s):

Performance Model ◽

Theory Of Constraints ◽

Competence Model ◽

Loanword Adaptation ◽

Formed Structure

Attractive as might seem the challenge to build a process or performance model that can account for every behavioural decision, there are a number of sound reasons to tackle first the still difficult (but hopefully manageable) task of developing a competence model; of trying to find the underlying system that informs and constrains (if it doesn't always actually govern) choice. (Spolsky 1988: 105)This article aims at showing the predictability of phonological adaptation, segment preservation and deletion in borrowings. It is shown that ill-formed segments are preserved and adapted in the vast majority of cases; segment deletion occurs only when an ill-formed segment is embedded within a higher level ill-formed structure, such as the syllable. This conclusion is based on the study of 15,686 segmental and syllabic malformations found in 11,348 loanword forms from five different corpora of loanwords. The analysis, which is set within the Theory of Constraints and Repair Strategies, is illustrated with the data from a corpus of 545 French loanwords in Fula.

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