Preservation and minimality in loanword adaptation

Abstract

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  : )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 , segmental and syllabic malformations found in , loanword forms from five different corpora [] We are indebted to Peter Avery, Outi Bat-el, Rene! e Be! land, for illuminating comments and\or useful discussions. We would like to offer special thanks to Sharon Inkelas for very detailed written comments and stimulating discussions. We are also grateful to the audience at the MOT Conference on Contrast in Phonology, held at the University of Toronto in February , notably to Elan Dresher, . This paper has also benefited from the comments from three JL referees. Finally, we wish to express our gratitude to our research assistants, especially Robert Neely, Yvan Rose, Caroline Lebel and Eliane Lebel for stimulating comments and questions, and our informants for their patience. We remain solely responsible for the views expressed here as well as for any remaining errors or omissions. C. Paradis acknowledges SSHRC grants T -- and T -- and FCAR grants T -NC- and -ER-, from which D. LaCharite! has also benefited. D. LaCharite! acknowledges SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship T --.     ! of loanwords. The analysis, which is set within the Theory of Constraints and Repair Strategies, is illustrated with the data from a corpus of  French loanwords in Fula. I This article is concerned with the phonological adaptation of borrowings in general, and French borrowings in Fula in particular. Often, loanwords enter the borrowing language (L) with structures (that is, segments and sequences) that are, from the point of view of L, ill-formed. We maintain that such structures are repaired minimally (a notion formally defined in section , by universal phonological operations that are triggered by the constraints of L. This produces the sound adaptations in loanwords that we observe on the surface. We show also that the segmental information contained in borrowings is maximally preserved, a result of the Preservation Principle, which is formalised in section . Segments are deleted, as opposed to adapted, only when adaptation would exceed the Threshold Principle, also presented in . Our results support the view that the loanword input to the phonology of L...

A Psycholinguistic Theory of Loanword Adaptations

“…In this language, neither onset nor coda clusters are allowed. In loanwords from French, an epenthetic vowel is added after the second consonant in liquid+obstruent clusters (4a), but between the consonants of obstruent+liquid clusters (4b) (Paradis and LaCharité 1997 In the native phonology, however, the epenthetic vowel is always inserted after the second consonant, both in the case of liquid+obstruent clusters (5a) and in the (much rarer) case of obstruent+liquid clusters (5b) (data from Paradis 1992).…”

Linguistic Outcomes of Language Contact

“…Penalosa (1990) documents partial phonological assimilation of Spanish loan words in four Mayan languages. Paradis & Lacharité (1997) studied 545 French loanwords in Fula, spoken in Mauritania and Senegal, both countries that have been influenced by French for more than a century since initial French colonization. They found that the loan words were introduced by bilinguals of varying degrees of bilingualism, who adapted the foreign phonological sequences according to what they call "repair strategies".…”

The Adaptation of English Consonants by Efik Learners of English

“…A similar case is seen in the adaptation of /k/ in /kaendl/ as /t/ in the Efik equivalent form [tiande] "candle". This kind of counter example has been described by Paradis & Lacharite (1997) as ill-formed which cannot be justify on the basis of a rule of strong adaptation tendency, though it has been minimally repaired. Apart from this segmental malformation, every instantiation of /z/ is manifested as /s/ in Efik.…”

“…In the analysis that follows, we examine the adaptation of the following categories of consonants; labial, dental, alveolar, palatal, velar and glottal. Our analysis is base on the phonological approximation view of loanword adaptation, which contends that L2-L1 mapping occurs on the basis of phonological distance rather than phonetic distance between categories; a L2 segment is replaced by L1 segment that is the closest phonologically (in terms of features) and not necessarily the segment that is closest perceptually (Paradis & Lacharite, 1997, 2008Chang, 2008).…”