Author: Christian Uffmann Publisher: Walter de Gruyter ISBN: 3110934825 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 258
Book Description
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.
Author: Andrea Calabrese Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing ISBN: 9027248230 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 289
Book Description
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."
Author: Abdullah Y. Alzaaq Publisher: ISBN: 9781369512045 Category : Arabic language Languages : en Pages : 76
Book Description
Abstract: The current study investigates loanword adaptations in the Arabic language. It supports the perceptual approximation stance asserting that the adaptation process is based on acoustic similarities rather than segment preservation by drawing evidence from two phenomena found in loanword adaptations. The first phenomenon is the pharyngealization phenomenon in which some loanwords adapted into Arabic are adapted with emphatic pharyngealized consonants, while the second phenomenon is vowel epenthesis. The claim presented in this study suggests that the pharyngealization phenomenon occurs due to the back vowel found in the source language in which it is associated with emphatic pharyngealized consonants in Arabic. Hence, the perception of the source language phoneme as an allophonic variant of an Arabic phoneme led to the pharyngealization phenomenon. The study also claims that the site in which a vowel is inserted to treat forbidden structures is governed by the nature of the cluster to increase the acoustic similarities between the input and the output. Fifty-five Najdi Arabic monolinguals and 55 Najdi Arabic-English bilinguals were recruited. The participants were given English nonce words containing /s/ and /t/ followed by the English back vowel /?/ which is also an allophonic variant of the Arabic phoneme /a/. They were also given English nonce words containing illegal initial consonant clusters in Najdi Arabic. The findings revealed that Najdi Arabic monolinguals adapted the consonant /s/ with pharyngealization more than the Najdi Arabic bilinguals; however, they did not show significant pharyngealization adaptation for /t/. Regarding vowel epenthesis, the study showed that vowel insertion was systematically governed by the nature of the cluster. However, they findings were not very clear regarding initial tri-consonant clusters.
Author: Patrick Honeybone Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199232814 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 817
Book Description
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.
Author: Martin Haspelmath Publisher: Walter de Gruyter ISBN: 3110218437 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 1104
Book Description
"This landmark publication in comparative linguistics is the first comprehensive work to address the general issue of what kinds of words tend to be borrowed from other languages. The authors have assembled a unique database of over 70,000 words from 40 languages from around the world, 18,000 of which are loanwords. This database allows the authors to make empirically founded generalizations about general tendencies of word exchange among languages." --Book Jacket.
Author: Laura J. Downing Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0191037737 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 208
Book Description
This book provides thorough descriptive and theory-neutral coverage of the full range of phonological phenomena of Chichewa, a Malawian Bantu language. Bantu languages have played and continue to play an important role as a source of data illustrating core phonological processes such as vowel harmony, nasal place assimilation, postnasal laryngeal alternations, tonal phenomena such as High tone spread and the OCP, prosodic morphology, and the phonology-syntax interface. Chichewa, in particular, has been a key language in the development of theoretical approaches to these phenomena. In this volume, Laura Downing and Al Mtenje examine not only these well-known features of Chichewa but also less well-studied phonological topics such as positional asymmetries in the distribution of segments, the phonetics of tone, and intonation. They survey important recent theoretical approaches to phonological problems such as focus prosody, reduplication, and vowel harmony, where Chichewa data is routinely referred to in the literature. The book will serve as a resource for all phonologists interested in these processes, regardless of their theoretical background, as well as Bantu scholars and linguists working on interface issues.
Author: Ho-Hsin Huang Publisher: ISBN: Category : Electronic dissertations Languages : en Pages : 223
Book Description
This dissertation investigates segment insertion through two contextualized loanword adaptation processes: intervocalic nasal and coda [m] adaptations, with corpus and experimental data. My research focuses are: 1) to identify the phonological environments of segment insertion in the target adaptation processes in my corpus data, and propose explanations for the insertion patterns in Standard Mandarin loanwords; 2) to verify my arguments with experimental data; 3) to examine whether bilingualism affects target segment adaptations; and 4) to discuss what linguistic mechanism controls the adaptation processes.Nasal insertion in Mandarin loanwords is considered an "unnecessary repair" since both English and Mandarin allow a syllable containing consonant-vowel-nasal. However, the existing loanwords show that nasal insertion has strong correlation to the prenasal vowel quality, and the primary word stress location in the source language. To trigger nasal insertion, the English prenasal vowel has to be lax (vowel type condition) and must bear the primary word stress (stress location condition), e.g. Denis → [tan.niː.sɹ̩]. Nasal insertion rarely occurs when the prenasal vowel is tense or a diphthong, e.g. ˈLina → [liː.naː]. Variable adaptation occurs when the prenasal vowel is [ə], e.g. ˈTiffany →[tiː.fan.nei] ~ [tiː.fuː.niː]. Low back [ɑ] never triggers nasal insertion, e.g. Caˈbana → [khaː.paː.naː]. I propose that adaptors are sensitive to the fine acoustic cues of the prenasal vowel and stress syllabification pattern. I argue that the "unnecessary repair" is necessary for acoustic cue mapping so the input is perceptually similar to the output.Vowel epenthesis is argued to fix illicit coda [m] in Mandarin, but it is related to syllable location and the following consonant type. It occurs in word-medial and word-final coda positions. It never occurs in homorganic environments with a prenasal lax vowel, e.g. Columbia → [kɤː.lun.piːjaː]. However, with a prenasal diphthong or tense vowel, vowel epenthesis still appears. Variable adaptation is present when coda [m] is in word-medial position followed by an obstruent, e.g. Camden → [khaː.muː.tən] ~ [khən.tun]. I propose that vowel epenthesis takes place to preserve all the segmental information, although the output may be perceived as less similar to the input due to an excess vowel. Repairing with [n]/[n] in homorganic environments not only preserves all the underlying features but also leads the output to be more perceptually similar to the input. Both modification methods suggest that coda [m] adaptation is motivated by phonological grammaticality, and acoustic cues play a relatively minor role.33 Mandarin monolingual and 24 Mandarin-English bilingual speakers participated in the experiments. Test item structures followed the corpus generalizations. For intervocalic nasal adaptation, the results from both groups are similar to each other and to the corpus data patterns: participants were sensitive to prenasal vowel quality. Similar results from the two groups further confirm that nasal insertion is more phonetically driven. For coda [m] adaptation, the results from the bilingual participants follow the Preservation Principle, even in homorganic lax vowel environments. The monolinguals repair the coda [m] through epenthesis and nasal place change by chance. I suggest that the coda [m] adaptation process is phonologically driven.This dissertation demonstrates that nasal adaptations in Standard Mandarin are contextualized. Two adaptation processes with essential differences in grammaticality are controlled by different linguistic mechanisms. Intervocalic nasal adaptation supports the perception-based loanword model, whereas coda [m] adaptation supports the phonology-based model.
Author: Christian Uffmann
Author: Olga Broniś
Author: Olga Broniś
Author: Andrea Calabrese
Author: Abdullah Y. Alzaaq
Author: Katrin Dohlus
Author: Patrick Honeybone
Author: Martin Haspelmath
Author: Laura J. Downing
Author: Ho-Hsin Huang