Darlene LaCharité

Category Preservation and Proximity versus Phonetic Approximation in Loanword Adaptation

In this article, we argue that loanword adaptation is overwhelmingly phonological and that phonetic approximation plays a limited role in the sound changes that loanwords undergo. Explicit criteria are used to compare the predictions of the phonetic approximation and phonological stances against 12 large corpora of recent English and French loanwords in several different languages. We show that category proximity is overwhelmingly preferred over perceptual proximity and that typical L2 perception/interpretation errors are not reflected in the adaptations of the loanwords of this database. Borrowers accurately identify L2 sound categories, operating on the mental representation of an L2 sound, not directly on its surface phonetic form.

Guttural deletion in loanwords

Among 4,499 segmental malformations found in English loanwords in three large corpora of French, the laryngeal /h/ is the only segment that is never adapted, i.e. replaced by another segment. We suggest that the systematic deletion of /h/ in French follows from the fact that, phonologically, French, like Portuguese and Italian, does not employ the Pharyngeal node, the articulator that characterises gutturals. This prevents English /h/ from being handled phonologically (deleted or substituted) in those languages. The non-availability of the Pharyngeal node also explains systematic deletion of the pharyngeal and laryngeal gutturals in Arabic loanwords in French. In contrast, English /h/ is adapted by languages employing the Pharyngeal node phonologically, such as Spanish, Bulgarian, Catalan, Mandarin Chinese, Greek and Russian. Likewise, the availability of the Pharyngeal node in Fula and English allows the adaptation of Arabic pharyngeal and laryngeal gutturals in Fula, and non-glottal gutturals in English.

Apparent phonetic approximation: English loanwords in Old Quebec French

A key debate in loanword adaptation is whether the process is primarily phonetic or phonological. Is it possible that researchers on each side are viewing equally plausible, but different, scenarios? Perhaps, in some language situations, adaptation is carried out mainly by those without access to L2 phonology and is, perforce, perceptually driven. In other situations, adaptation may be done by bilinguals who actively draw upon their knowledge of L2 phonology in adapting loanwords. The phonetic strategy would most likely be favored in situations where the vast majority of the population did not know the L2, thus having no possible access to the L2 phonological system. The phonological strategy, on the other hand, is most likely to be favored in situations where there is a high proportion of speakers who are bilingual in the LI and L2. This possibility is tested by comparing the adaptations of English loanwords in I9th- and early 20th-century Quebec French, when bilinguals were few, to those of contemporary Quebec French, in which the rate of bilingualism is far higher. The results show that even when the proportion of bilinguals in a society is relatively small, they determine how loanwords are pronounced in the borrowing language. Bilinguals adapt loanwords on the basis of phonology, not of faulty perception of foreign sounds and structures. However, in a society where bilinguals are few, there is a slight increase in non-phonological influences in loanword adaptation. We address the small role played by non-phonological factors, including phonetic approximation, orthography, and analogy (true or false), showing that false analogy, in particular, may give the impression that phonetic approximation is more widespread in a loanword corpus than is actually the case.

The Iconic Interpretations of Reduplication: Issues in the Study of Reduplication in Caribbean Creole Languages

The aim of this paper is to explore the extent to which the iconic principle, that ‘more of the same form’ corresponds to ‘more of the same meaning’, is evidenced in reduplications in various Caribbean Creoles (including English-, Spanish-, Dutch-, and French-lexifier Creoles).1 We will demonstrate that the form/meaning relationship is not a simple one, but requires a finegrained analysis that considers the inherent semantic properties of the base, and allows for language-specific instantiations, which may display considerable departure from a transparent form/meaning relationship. Reduplication refers to a morphological relation between a base and a derived form which involves the repetition of all or part of the base. Where all of the base is repeated, we speak of whole-word reduplication; where only part of the base surfaces in the reduplicant, it is referred to as partial. Reduplication is considered one of the hallmarks of Creole morphology, along with morphological conversion and compounding.2

Andreas Ammann & Aina Urdze, Wiederholung, Parallelismus, Reduplikation: Strategien der multiplen Strukturanwendung; Enoch Aboh, Norval Smith & Anne Zribi-Hertz (eds.), The morphosyntax of reiteration in creole and non-creole languages

Abstract

Thomas Stolz, Cornelia Stroh & Aina Urdze, Total reduplication: The areal linguistics of a potential universal

Abstract

Perceptions of Intelligibility and RTs: Accent-Tolerant vs Non-Accent-Tolerant Listeners

When adult Canadian French (henceforth CF) learners of English as a second language (L2) speak English, two striking aspects of their French accent are incorrect production of English word stress and incorrect production of vowel reduction (Capliez, 2011; Frost, 2011; Ploquin, 2009; Tremblay and Owens, 2010). Either CF speakers place word stress on the wrong syllable and reduce the vowels of the wrong syllables, or they omit one or both of these pronunciation features altogether.