Edited by Karen Dakin, Claudia Parodi and Natalie Operstein
[Studies in Language Companion Series 185] 2017
► pp. 106–124
In their proposed taxonomy of loanword prosody types, Davis, Tsujimura & Tu (2012: 36) remark on the potentially interesting difference between the assimilation of loanwords into a majority prosodic pattern in the recipient language and their assimilation into a minority prosodic pattern. This difference, however, is not incorporated in the taxonomy proposed in that work. This paper takes up this discussion by investigating case studies in which loanwords are assigned to a minority, or “marked”, prosodic pattern in the recipient language. The starting point for the discussion is the unusual pattern of stress-to-tone mapping in early Spanish loanwords in Zaniza Zapotec, a Mesoamerican language. The paper then discusses similar patterns reported from other areas of the world, arguing that they are significant for our understanding of the typology of loanword prosody and the effects on it of sociolinguistic factors.