Xiaomin Mou | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The paper documents and analyzes the ways in which English loanwords into Mandarin are adapted to conform to the Rhyme Harmony constraint that requires the front vs. back quality of a nonhigh vowel to agree with the coronal vs. dorsal character of a nasal coda. The principal finding is that the backness of the English vowel determines the outcome and can force a change in the place of articulation of the nasal coda. This is attributed to the phonetic salience of the vowel feature in comparison to the relative weakness of the nasal place feature. It is concluded that phonetic salience is a critical factor in loanword adaptation that can override a phonologically contrastive feature.
2023. L2 Proficiency Level Influences Loanword Adaptation: Variable Adaptation of English Co-occurrence of Low Vowel and Nasal Into Mandarin. SAGE Open 13:4
Chen, Yangyu & Yu-An Lu
2022. Variation in loanword adaptation: A case from Mandarin Chinese. Second Language Research 38:3 ► pp. 423 ff.
Chiu, Chenhao & Yu-An Lu
2021. Articulatory Evidence for the Syllable-final Nasal Merging in Taiwan Mandarin. Language and Speech 64:4 ► pp. 771 ff.
2020. The Effects of Phonetic Duration on Loanword Adaptation: Mandarin Falling Diphthong in Chinese Korean. Lanaguage Research 56:2 ► pp. 225 ff.
Li, Jian
2017. Tracing the heritage of Pidgin English in mainland China. English Today 33:3 ► pp. 46 ff.
Cheng, Bing & Yang Zhang
2015. Syllable Structure Universals and Native Language Interference in Second Language Perception and Production: Positional Asymmetry and Perceptual Links to Accentedness. Frontiers in Psychology 6
Ito, Chiyuki
2014. Loanword accentuation in Yanbian Korean: a weighted-constraints analysis. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 32:2 ► pp. 537 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.