Cover not available
Part of
Historical Linguistics 2015: Selected papers from the 22nd International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Naples, 27-31 July 2015
Edited by Michela Cennamo and Claudia Fabrizio
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 348] 2019
► pp. 57–74

Chapter 3
Pertinacity in loanwords

Same underlying systems, different outputs

Editors
Native speakers are often surprised by the way different languages adapt their words; the same phoneme may be borrowed into different languages in different ways. Even related languages need not adapt the same phoneme in an identical fashion. Evidence from a variety of languages suggests that during loan adaptation, the underlying phonological systems of the donor language need to match those of the borrowing language, as has been proposed by many in the literature. Here we show that the universal principle of “PLACE first”, which promotes overlapping place of articulation features (including ARTICULATORS and TONGUE HEIGHT), guides the substitution choice, resulting in different outputs from the same loan.
Keywords: phonology, loanword adaptation, FUL, Bengali, English
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Adapting /θ/ in Bengali
  • 3.English /θ/ in German and Dutch
  • 4.Brief excursus: /θ/ into English via Greek
  • 5.Mapping loans – same pattern, different output?
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 September 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.348.03lah
References (37)
References
Best, Catherine T., Gerald W. McRoberts & Elizabeth Goodell. 2001. Discrimination of non-native consonant contrasts varying in perceptual assimilation to the listener’s native phonologial system. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 109(2). 775–794. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bloomfield, Leonard. 1933. Language. New York: H. Holt & Company.Google Scholar
Broselow, Ellen. 2009. Stress adaptation in loanword phonology: perception and learnability. In Paul Boersma & Silke Hamann (eds.), Phonology in Perception, 191–234. Berlin: Mouton.Google Scholar
Chatterji, Suniti Kumar. 1975 [1926]. The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language. Volume 1. Calcutta: Rupa & Co.Google Scholar
Chatterji, Suniti Kumar & Sen, Priyaranjan Sen 1931. Manoel de Assumpçam’s Bengali Grammar. Facsimile of the Original Portuguese with Bengali Translations and Selections from his Bengali-Portuguese Vocabulary. Calcutta: Calcutta University Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam & Morris Halle. 1968. The Sound Pattern of English. New York: Harper.Google Scholar
Dresher, Elan & Aditi Lahiri. 2005. Main stress left in Early Middle English. In Michael Fortescue, Eva Skafte Jensen, Jens Erik Mogensen & Lene Schøsler (eds.), Historical Linguistics 2003: Selected papers from the 16th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Copenhagen, 11–15 August 2003, 75–85. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ghini, Mirco. 2001. Asymmetries in the phonology of Miogliola. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hall, T. Alan. 1997. The phonology of coronals. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halle, Morris, Bert Vaux & Andrew Wolfe. 2000. On feature spreading and the representation of place of articulation. Linguistic Inquiry 31:3. 387–444. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hanulíková, Adriana & Andrea Weber. 2012. Sink positive: Linguistic experience with th substitutions influences nonnative word recognition. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 74:3. 613–629. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hyman, Larry. 1970. The role of borrowings in the justification of phonological grammars. Studies in African Linguistics 1. 1–48.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Haike & Carlos Gussenhoven. 2000. Loan phonology: Perception, salience, the lexicon and OT. In Jost Dekkers, Jeroen van de Leeuw & Frank van der Weijer (eds.), Optimality theory: phonology, syntax and acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Keating, Patricia & Aditi Lahiri. 1993. Fronted velars, palatalized velars, and palatals. Phonetica 50. 73–101. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kenstowicz, Michael & Atiwong Suchato. 2006. Issues in loanword adaptation: A case study from Thai. Lingua 116:7. 921–949. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klaiman, M. H. 1990. Bengali. In Bernard Comrie (ed.), The World’s Major Languages, 490–513. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kotzor, Sandra, Allison Wetterlin, Adam C. Roberts & Aditi Lahiri. 2015. Processing of Phonemic Consonant Length: Semantic and Fragment Priming Evidence from Bengali. Language and Speech. 1–30.Google Scholar
Kuhl, Patricia K. 1994. Learning and representation in speech and language. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 4:6. 812–822. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lahiri, Aditi. 2002. Pertinacity in Representation and Change. Paper presented at the Workshop on Pertinacity, Schloss Freudental, July 10–14, 2002.Google Scholar
. 2012. Asymmetric phonological representations of words in the mental lexicon. In Abigail C. Cohn & Cécile Fougeron (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Laboratory Phonology, 146–161. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lahiri, Aditi & Sheila E. Blumstein. 1984. A re-evaluation of the feature “coronal”. Journal of Phonetics 12. 133–145.Google Scholar
Lahiri, Aditi & Vincent Evers. 1991. Palatalization and coronality. In Carole Paradis & Jean-François Prunet (eds.), The special status of coronals: internal and external evidence, 79–100. San Diego: Academic Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lahiri, Aditi & Paula Fikkert. 1999. Trisyllabic shortening in English: past and present. English Language and Linguistics 3:2. 229–267. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lahiri, Aditi & Henning Reetz. 2010. Distinctive Features: Phonological underspecification in representation and processing. Journal of Phonetics 38. 44–59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mohanan, K. P. & Tara Mohanan. 1984. Lexical phonology of the consonant system in Malayalam. Linguistic Inquiry 15:4. 575–602.Google Scholar
Paradis, Carole. 2006. The unnatural /Cʲu/ (< foreign /Cy/) sequence in Russian loanwords: A problem for the perceptual view. Lingua 116:7. 976–995. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paradis, Carole & Darlene LaCharité. 1997. Preservation and minimality in loanword adaptation. Journal of Linguistics 33:2. 379–430. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. Loanword Adaptation: From Lessons Learned to Findings. In John A. Goldsmith, Jason Riggle & Alan C. L. Yu (eds.), The Handbook of Phonological Theory, 751–778. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Parkinson, Stephen. 2015. Portuguese into Bengali. Presentation in the General Linguistics Seminar, University of Oxford, Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics, May 19.Google Scholar
Peperkamp, Sharon & Emmanuel Dupoux. 2003. Reinterpreting loanword adaptations: The role of perception. In Maria-Josep Solé, Daniel Recasens & Joaquin Romero (eds.), etc. Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 367–370. Adelaide: Causal Productions.Google Scholar
Prokosch, Eduard. 1939. A comparative Germanic grammar. Philadelphia: Linguistic Society of America, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Roberts, Adam C., Allison Wetterlin & Aditi Lahiri. 2013. Aligning mispronounced words to meaning: Evidence from ERP and reaction time studies. The Mental Lexicon 8(2). 140–163. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silverman, David. 1992. Multiple scansions in loanword phonology: evidence from Cantonese. Phonology 9:2. 289–328. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Trommelen, Mieke. 1984. The syllable in Dutch: with special reference to diminutive formation. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Vendelin, Inga & Sharon Peperkamp. 2006. The influence of orthography on loanword adaptations. Lingua 116:7. 996–1007. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yip, Moira. 1993. Cantonese loanword phonology and Optimality Theory. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 2:3. 261–291. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2006. The symbiosis between perception and grammar in loanword phonology. Lingua 116:7. 950–975. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Bowern, Claire, David Goldstein, George Walkden, Anne Breitbarth, Chelsea Sanker, Freek Van de Velde, Ranjan Sen & Aditi Lahiri
2023. Diachrony and Diachronica . Diachronica 40:5 ► pp. 666 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 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.