Gairaigo in The Covid-19 Pandemic Era: A Study of Transformational Generative Phonology

Transformational Generative Phonology is a phonological theory that treats the distinguishing feature as the smallest unit and connects the distinguishing features and lexicons with phonological rules. This research has been conducted by several previous researchers, but study regarding the object in the Covid-19 pandemic is still limited. The purpose of this study was to explain the phonological process and phonological rules of foreign loan words into Japanese using transformational generative phonological approach. This study used descriptive qualitative method. Sources of the data were obtained from vocabularies or terms that appeared during the Covid-19 period. The results of this study indicated that there were six phonological rules which include, 1) the addition of the phoneme [u] at the end of words; 2) the addition of the phoneme [o] at the end of the word; 3) Addition of phoneme [u] in the middle of the word, 4) Addition of phoneme [o] in the middle of the word; 5) Addition of phoneme [k] at the end of the word, and; 6) Substitution of phoneme [l] to [r]. So that the implementation of this research was to create a rule to make it easier for foreign learners of Japanese to understand the sound changes that occur in Japanese lingual units.

Emerging Phonology Under Language Contact: The Case of Sino-Russian Idiolects

The main aim of this study is to examine what kind of phonological system emerges because of language contact wherein adult speakers of L1 (Chinese) attempt to speak L2 (Russian) without any previous instruction in L2. The main findings of this study are as follows: a) The speakers of L1 largely adopt the phonetic inventory and phonotactics of L2 and b) the only underlying (distinctive) features in the emerging phonological system are those of place of articulation while voicing plays no distinctive role in the emerging phonological system of Chinese speakers. Moreover, the speakers of L1 faithfully replicate the stress system of L2, even though L1 (Chinese) is a tonal language and L2, Russian, is a stress language. The most important finding of this study is that speakers of L1 discern the entity ‘word’ in L2. The emerging phonological system is geared towards assuring the identifiability of words in L2 rather than towards consistency of phonological rules.

Phonological vs. natural gender cues in the acquisition of German by simultaneous and sequential bilinguals (German–Russian)

We investigate German–Russian bilingual children's sensitivity to formal and semantic cues when assigning gender to nouns in German. Across languages, young children have been shown to primarily rely on phonological cues, whereas sensitivity to semantic and syntactic cues increases with age. With its semi-transparent gender assignment system, where both formal and semantic cues are psycho linguistically relevant, German has weak phonological cues compared to other languages, and children have been argued to acquire semantic and phonological rules in tandem. German–Russian bilingual children face the challenge of acquiring two different gender assignment systems simultaneously. We tested 45 bilingual children (ages 4–10 years) and monolingual controls. Results show that the children are clearly sensitive to phonological cues, while semantic cues play a minor role. However, monolingual and bilingual children have different defaulting strategies, with monolinguals defaulting to neuter and bilinguals to feminine gender.

Using mnemonic techniques to memorize the tone of Chinese characters

This article is devoted to the use of mnemonic techniques for memorizing the tone of Chinese characters. At present, the ties with the East are strengthening, and more and more people becomeinterested in Chinese. It is difficult to study primarily because of the tones, the incorrect use of which can distort the meaning of a word and even a whole sentence. Therefore, from the first day of training, it is important to pay due attention to them, to practice this aspect. Students who study Chinese may face a number of problems, such as: the inability to distinguish the tone by hearing, the inability to reproduce the basic tones, the inability to remember the correct tone, the inability to reproduce the tones in context, ignorance of phonological rules, mixing tones and intonations. To solve these problems, one can learn the Chinese tones using different resources and techniques. The object of the study is the mnemonic techniques used in the study of Chinese characters. In the course of the study, the following task was set: to determine an effective way of memorizing Chinese characters using mnemonics. The effectiveness of the method was tested experimentally. We have considered examples of legends (stories) created by the authors of the article to remember the direction of the tone. It is important to say these stories-legends aloud, presenting a picture in your head, creating an associative series. The use of mnemonic techniques for memorizing the tone of Chinese characters contributes to the maximum development of imaginative thinking, the creation of stable associations, as well as increasing the time of concentration

The Acoustic Effect of Urdu Phonological Rules on English Speech

The paper is about the acoustic effect of Urdu phonological rules on Pakistani Urdu speakers' English speech. The objective of the study is to discuss the phenomenon of multiple pronunciations of an English word that has the same spellings, meaning, and part of speech but different pronunciations in the English speech of Urdu speakers. Sometimes these alternative pronunciations are considered mispronunciation rather than multiple pronunciations. The primary purpose of this study is to make a boundary-line between mispronunciations and multiple pronunciations of English vocabulary. Thus, an acoustic analysis of Urdu speakers' English speech has been done by collecting speech data of 30 Urdu speakers from the Public sector universities of Pakistan. Consequently, this paper caters to language-dependent variations of Urdu. This paper only deals with three phonological rules, i.e., segment alternation, ellipsis, epenthesis, which become the cause for re-syllabification of English words. These three foci of research have been selected because the data analysis has confirmed that the 'multiple pronunciation' is mainly occurred due to these three elements. These three categories cover several sub-categories that cover many instances in the data analysis. The data also confirms that phonological variations occur due to stress shifting in Urdu speakers' English speech in Pakistan.

Old Frisian Breaking and Labial Mutation Revisited

The sound changes of ‘breaking’ and ‘labial mutation’ in Old Frisian are often referred to as distinct and unrelated phenomena only having been subject to similar processes. In the study at hand, this view is revisited by taking into account arguments on the basis of Old Frisian syllable structure and the particular environments in which these changes arise. The findings suggest that both Old Frisian breaking and labial mutation are concatenations of very similar consecutive but independent changes. This article argues for a reinterpretation of the two processes as caused by the same core phonetic process which is in its essence a backness levelling phenomenon. The two proposed phonological rules governing this process cross-cut previous assumptions about the triggers of epenthesis and thus provide a better fit to the data than positing two unrelated changes does.

Phonological Adaptation of Hokkien Loanwords in Indonesian

The Chinese loan words in Indonesian mainly come from the Hokkien. Many scholars have studied the Hokkien loanwords in Indonesian, but they analyzed from the perspective of semantics and culture, and there is still little research on phonological adaptation. This research attempts to answer three questions, namely, what phonological adaptation do the Hokkien loanwords in Indonesian have in the process of being accepted? Are there sound correspondences between Hokkien loanwords in Indonesian? What are the phonological rules for phonological adaptation of Hokkien loanwords in Indonesian? This research is mainly based on the literature method and comparative research method. Data were collected through literature search and recording. The collected data were processed for natural hearing, a comparative analysis of two Indonesian Hokkien speakers' sound production, and four Indonesian speakers' sound production is conducted. The sound production of the speakers are segmented and coded manually using Praat Version 6.0 (Boersma & Weenink, 2015) focused on the measurements of the acoustic parameters of the sounds produced differently by the two groups of informants and, finally, summed up. Since Indonesian has a more uncomplicated vowel system and a different consonant inventory, when we look at the Hokkien loanwords in Indonesian, we will observe many substitution rules. To maintain the Indonesian syllable structure and phonological restrictions, the Indonesian phonological rules that appear in certain environments are considered to apply to Hokkien loanwords.Keywords: Language contact, Hokkien loanwords, Phonological adaptation