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The adaptation of a loanword involves the resolution of often conflicting demands to preserve as much information from the source word as possible while still satisfying the constraints that make the lexical item sound like a word of the recipient language. Prince and Smolensky's (1993) constraint-based Optimality Theory with its key notions of faithfulness and violable constraints is particularly well suited to model this aspect of linguistic competence. In adapting a foreign word the speaker is often faced with choices as to which information of the source to preserve and which to sacrifice. Recent study of In this paper we analyze the adaptation of English loanwords into Fijian from this perspective. The data and basic descriptive generalizations originate from a series of papers by Albert Schütz (1978, 1983, 1985, 1999). After a brief introduction we analyze the adaptation strategies employed to maintain the stress of the English source word in the face of the native metrical constraints. We then examine in turn the adaptation of consonant clusters, certain variations in the quality of the epenthetic vowel, and the substitution of voiced stops. The paper concludes with a summary of the main results. BackgroundFijian is probably best known in the generative tradition for its moraic trochee parse from the right edge of word and its reliance on trochaic shortening to maintain foot binarity and strict right-edge alignment (Blevins 1994, Hayes 1995. In the native system there is a vowel length contrast (1a). Syllables are parsed into bimoraic trochaic feet from right to left; the main stress of the word or phrase is located in the rightmost foot (1b). The right edge of the word is rigidly aligned with a foot. In case an underlying long vowel falls in the penult, it is shortened to satisfy foot alignment and bimoraic foot structure (1c).

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With the advent of constraint-based theories of phonology such as Prince & Smolensky's (1993) Optimality Theory (OT), whether-and if so, how many-levels/cycles intervene between the underlying and phonetic representations has emerged as a significant issue. In this paper we raise the question in the context of metrical parsing. After reviewing the basic constraints proposed by Prince & Smolensky (1993), Green (1993) and McCarthy & Prince (1993b) for the analysis of standard trochaic systems in §1, we turn in §2 to the stress contours of Indonesian, which have been argued by Cohn (1989, 1993) to require a two-stage metrification applying first to the stem and then to the stem plus suffixes. Clashing stresses that arise from metrifying in stages are removed at the surface by a clash deletion rule. We review in some detail the cyclic analysis of Indonesian proposed by Halle & Idsardi (1994) within the bracketed grid framework of metrical parsing. We proceed to show that if alignment constraints between morphological and prosodic structure are permitted, then an equally plausible non-cyclic analysis of Indonesian is possible which avoids the intermediate representation. In §3 we demonstrate that outputoriented constraint evaluation allows us to formalise the mysterious suspension of an otherwise general stress subordination found in Indonesian reduplication structures. In the final sections of the paper we show that unlike in Indonesian, the stress contours of certain constructions in Carib, Shanghai Chinese and Polish do require reference to an intermediate stage. All these cases involve a monosyllabic clitic/particle that is metrically integrated with the following base either by the minimal overwriting of structure computed at an earlier stage of the derivation or directly by constraints that evaluate the clitic # base structure for identity with the isolation form of the base.