The Role of Loanword Diffusion in Changing Adaptation Patterns: A Study of Coronal Stops in Japanese Borrowings
نویسندگان
چکیده
Optimality-Theoretic analyses of loanword phonology account for the phonological adaptations seen in loanwords using one of two mechanisms: markedness constraints in the phonology of L1 speakers, and perceptual biases affecting the input. However, while these analyses may be able to account for the synchronic behavior of a single speaker in borrowing a particular loanword, they cannot easily account for the systematic change over time in loanword adaptation patterns seen in a speech community that is becoming more bilingual in L2. After examining the adaptation patterns affecting coronal stops before high front vowels in Japanese loanwords, I will argue that the nativization of [ti] and [di] sequences in early loans was not caused by a highly ranked markedness constraint forbidding these sequences, but rather emerged from the cumulative misperceptions and misproductions of loanwords containing [ti] and [di] as they spread throughout the Japanese speech community.
منابع مشابه
An evolutionary account of loanword-induced sound change in Japanese
Generative accounts of loanword phonology typically focus on the role of an individual speaker's grammar and/or perceptual biases in generating the phonological adaptations seen in loanwords. While these types of generative models can be successfully used to explain static synchronic patterns in loanword adaptations in terms of the set of existing constraints in the native phonology, it is more...
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