Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T15:16:22.486Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Apparent phonetic approximation: English loanwords in Old Quebec French1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2008

CAROLE PARADIS  and
DARLENE LACHARITÉ
CAROLE PARADIS*
Affiliation:
Laval University
DARLENE LACHARITÉ*
Affiliation:
Laval University
*
Authors’ address: Département de langues, linguistique et traduction, Université Laval, Québec, G1K 7P4, Canada. E-mail: [email protected][email protected]
Authors’ address: Département de langues, linguistique et traduction, Université Laval, Québec, G1K 7P4, Canada. E-mail: [email protected][email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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 L1 and L2. This possibility is tested by comparing the adaptations of English loanwords in 19th- 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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 87 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[1]

This article develops the first part of the talk that we presented at the second North American Conference in Phonology at Concordia University in Montreal (Paradis & LaCharité 2002). This article is also an augmented and considerably revised version of the presentation that we made at the colloquium Des représentations aux contraintes/From representations to constraints at University Toulouse-Le Mirail (Paradis & LaCharité 2003). We are grateful to these audiences for their comments and questions, especially to Mike Kenstowicz, Jean-François Prunet, Marie-Hélène Côté, Jacques Durand, Elsa Gomez-Imbert, Jerzy Rubach, Laurence Labrune, Phil Carr and David Odden. We would also like to thank our colleague Claude Poirier for his help with Old Quebec French and our colleagues Pierre Martin, Jean-Guy Lebel and Conrad Ouellon for their help with the phonetics of Quebec French. Finally, we wish to express our gratitude to our research assistants, who were deeply involved in the construction of the Old Quebec French corpus. We would also like to thank the JL anonymous referees for their many constructive comments and questions and the JL editors for their painstaking editorial work. We remain solely responsible for the views expressed here as well as for any remaining errors or omissions. Research for this article was made possible by SSHRCC grant #410-2000-0337 to C. Paradis and D. LaCharité and by SSHRCC grant #410-2003-1459 to C. Paradis.

References

Ahrend, Evelyn. 1934. Ontario speech. American Speech 9, 136–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Avis, Walter. 1973. The English language in Canada. In Thomas, Sebeok (ed.) Linguistics in North America (Current Trends in Linguistics 10), 40–74. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Best, Catherine & Tyler, Michael. 2007. Nonnative and second-language speech perception: Commonalities and complementarities. In Ocke-Schwen, Bohn & Murray, Munro (eds.) Language experience in second language speech learning: In honor of James Emil Flege, 13–34. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloomfield, Morton. 1975. Canadian English and its relation to eighteenth century American speech. In Jack, Chambers (ed.) Canadian English: Origins and structures, 3–15. Toronto: Methuen.Google Scholar
Bouchard, Chantal. 2002. La langue et le nombril: une histoire sociolinguistique du Québec. Quebec City, Quebec: Fides.Google Scholar
Brousseau, Anne-Marie & Nikiema, Emmanuel. 2001. Phonologie et morphologie du français. Quebec City, Quebec: Fides.Google Scholar
Caramazza, Alfonso & Yeni-Komshian, H. Grace. 1974. Voice onset time in two French dialects. Journal of Phonetics 2, 239–245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caramazza, Alfonso, Yeni-Komshian, H. Grace, Zurif, B. Edgar & Carbone, E.. 1973. The acquisition of a new phonological contrast: The case of stop consonants in French–English bilinguals. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 54, 421–428.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cenoz, Jasone, Hufeisen, Britta & Jessner, Ulrike. 2003. The multilingual lexicon. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chauveau, Jean-Paul & Lavoie, Thomas. 1993. A propos des origines dialectales du lexique québécois. Revue de Linguistique Romane 57, 373–420.Google Scholar
Danesi, Marcel. 1985. Loanwords and phonological methodology. Lasalle, Quebec: Didier.Google Scholar
Davis, Stuart. 2004. Phonetics vs. phonology: The word-final /s/ problem in Korean loanword adaptation. Presented at the Twelfth Manchester Phonology Meeting, Manchester, 20–22 May.Google Scholar
Delattre, Pierre. 1981. An acoustic and articulatory study of vowel reduction in four languages. In Pierre, Delattre (ed.) Studies in comparative phonetics, 63–93. Heidelberg: Julius Groos Verlag.Google Scholar
Elman, Jeffrey. 1989. Connectionist approaches to acoustic/phonetic processing. In William, Marslen-Wilson (ed.) Lexical representation and process, 227–260. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Escudero, Paola. 2001. The role of the input in the development of L1 and L2 sound contrasts: Language-specific cue weighting for vowels. In Anna, Do, Dominguez, Laura & Johnson, Aimée (eds.) Proceedings of the 25th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 250–261. Boston, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Escudero, Paola. 2005. Linguistic perception and second language acquisition: Explaining the attainment of optimal phonological categorization. Utrecht: LOT.Google Scholar
Escudero, Paola & Polka, Linda. 2003. A cross-language study of vowel categorization and vowel acoustics: Canadian English versus Canadian French. In Maria-Josep, Solé, Recasens, Daniel & Romero, Joaquín (eds.) Proceedings of the 15th Congress of the International Phonetics Association, 861–864. Barcelona: Futurgraphic.Google Scholar
Foss, Donald & Hakes, David. 1978. Psycholinguistics: An introduction to the psychology of language. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Fox, Robert A., Flege, James E. & Munro, Murray. 1995. The perception of English and Spanish vowels by native English and Spanish listeners: A multidimensional scaling analysis. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 97, 2540–2550.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gathercole, Susan. 1997. Models of verbal short-term memory. In Martin, Conway (ed.) Cognitive models of memory, 13–45. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Gendron, Jean-Denis. 1967. Le phonétisme du français canadien du Québec. Études de linguistique franco-canadienne. In Jean-Denis, Gendron & Straka, Georges (eds.) Études de linguistique franco-canadienne, 15–67. Paris: Klincksieck & Quebec City, Quebec: Presses de l'Université Laval.Google Scholar
Görlach, Manfred. 1991. An introduction to early modern English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gottfried, Terry & Beddor, Patrice. 1988. Perception of temporal and spectral information in French vowels. Language and Speech 31, 57–75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hefferman, Kevin. 2005. Phonetic similarity and phonemic contrast in loanword adaptation. Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics 24, 117–123.Google 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 & Gussenhoven, Carlos. 2000. Loan phonology: Perception, salience, the lexicon and OT. In Joost, Dekkers, Leeuw, Frank van der & Weijer, Jeroen van de (eds.) Optimality Theory: Phonology, syntax, and acquisition, 193–210. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Daniel. 1972. An outline of English phonetics, 9th edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Juneau, Marcel. 1972. Contribution à l'histoire de la prononciation française au Québec. Quebec City, Quebec: Presses de l'Université Laval.Google Scholar
Kang, Yoonjung. 2003. Perceptual similarity in loanword adaptation: English post-vocalic word-final stops in Korean. Phonology 20(2), 219–273.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kenstowicz, Michael. 2003. The role of perception in loanword phonology. Review article of Flavien Gbéto, Les emprunts linguistiques d'origine européenne en fon. Studies in African Linguistics 32, 95–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kenstowicz, Michael & Sohn, Hyang-Sook. 2001. Accentual adaptation in North Kyungsang Korean. In Michael, Kenstowicz (ed.) Ken Hale: A life in language, 239–270. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Soohee & Curtis, Emily. 2002. Phonetic duration of English /s/ and its borrowing in Korean. Japanese/Korean Linguistics 10, 406–419.Google Scholar
Kuhl, Patricia. 2000. A new view of language acquisition. The National Academy of Sciences USA 97, 11850–11857.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
LaCharité, Darlene & Paradis, Carole. 2002. Addressing and disconfirming some predictions of phonetic approximation for loanword adaptation. Revue de Langues et Linguistique 28, 73–91.Google Scholar
LaCharité, Darlene & Paradis, Carole. 2005. Category preservation and proximity versus phonetic approximation in loanword adaptation. Linguistic Inquiry 36(2), 223–258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ladefoged, Peter. 2001. Vowels and consonants: An introduction to the sounds of language. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
Lavoie, Thomas, Bergeron, Gaston & Côté, Michelle. 1985. Les parlers français de Charlevoix, du Saguenay, du Lac-Saint-Jean et de la Côte-Nord. Quebec City, Quebec: Publications du Québec.Google Scholar
Lovins, Julie. 1975. Loanwords and the phonological structure of Japanese. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
MacKay, Ian. 1987. Phonetics: The science of speech production. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.Google Scholar
Martin, Pierre. 2003. Le système vocalique du français du Québec. De l'acoustique à la phonologie. La Linguistique 38(2), 71–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ostiguy, Luc, Sarrasin, Robert & Irons, Glenwood. 1996. Introduction à la phonétique comparée. Quebec City, Quebec: Presses de l'Université Laval.Google Scholar
Paradis, Carole. 2006. The unnatural /Cju/ (<foreign /Cy/) sequence in Russian loanwords: A problem for the perceptual view. Lingua 116, 976–995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paradis, Carole & LaCharité, Darlene. 1997. Preservation and minimality in loanword adaptation. Journal of Linguistics 33(2), 379–430.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paradis, Carole & LaCharité, Darlene. 2001. Guttural deletion in loanwords. Phonology 18(2), 255–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paradis, Carole & LaCharité, Darlene. 2002. Delimiting phonetic approximation in loanword adaptation. Presented at the 2nd North American Phonology Conference (Naphc), Concordia University, Montreal, 26–28 April.Google Scholar
Paradis, Carole & LaCharité, Darlene. 2003. English loanwords in Old Quebec French: Fewer bilinguals does not mean a great increase in phonetic approximation. To appear in Mark, Hale & Reiss, Charles (eds.) Issues in phonological theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Paradis, Carole & Prunet, Jean-François. 2000. Nasal vowels as two segments: Evidence from borrowings. Language 76, 324–357.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peperkamp, Sharon & Dupoux, Emmanuel. 2002. Loanword adaptations: Three problems for phonology (and a psycholinguistic solution). Presented at the 2nd North American Phonology Conference (NAPHC), Concordia University, Montreal, 26–28 April.Google Scholar
Peperkamp, Sharon & Emmanuel, Dupoux. 2003. Reinterpreting loanword adaptations: The role of perception. The 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 367–370. Barcelona: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.Google Scholar
Pickett, James M. 1999. The acoustics of speech communication: Fundamentals, speech perception theory, and technology. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.Google Scholar
Poirier, Claude. 1975. Prononciation québécoise ancienne d'après les graphies d'un notaire du XVIIe siècle. In Marcel, Juneau & Straka, Georges (eds.) Travaux de linguistique québécoise, 193–256. Paris: Klincksieck & Quebec City, Quebec: Presses de l'Université Laval.Google Scholar
Pupier, Paul & Drapeau, Lynn. 1973. La réduction des groupes de consonnes finales en français de Montréal. Cahier de Linguistique 3, 127–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rivard, Adjutor & Geoffrion, Louis-Philippe. 1930. Glossaire du parler français au Canada. Quebec City, Quebec: Action Sociale.Google Scholar
Rogers, Henry. 2000. The sounds of language: An introduction to phonetics. Toronto: Pearson.Google Scholar
Silverman, Daniel. 1992. Multiple scansions in loanword phonology: Evidence from Cantonese. Phonology 9, 289–328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, William. 1795. An attempt to render the pronunciation of the English language more easy to foreigners. Menston, UK: Scolar Press.Google Scholar
Straka, Georges. 1965. Album phonétique. Quebec City, Quebec: Presses de l'Université Laval.Google Scholar
Strang, Barbara. 1970. A history of English. London: Menthuen.Google Scholar
Uffman, Christian. 2004a. Epenthetic vowel quality in loanwords: Empirical and formal issues. Presented at the Twelfth Manchester Phonology Meeting, Manchester, 20–22 May, 2004.Google Scholar
Uffman, Christian. 2004b. Vowel epenthesis in loanword phonology. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Marburg.Google Scholar
Ulrich, Charles. 1997. Loanword adaptation in Lama: Testing the TCRS model. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 42(4), 415–463.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vendelin, Inga & Peperkamp, Sharon. 2004. Evidence for phonetic adaptation of loanwords: An experimental study. IV eJournées d’Études Linguistiques de l'Université de Nantes, 127–131. Nantes.Google Scholar
Walker, Douglas. 1984. The pronunciation of Canadian French. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.Google Scholar
Wells, John Christopher. 1982. Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wyld, Henry. 1906. The historical study of the mother tongue: An introduction to philological method. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
Yeni-Komshian, Grace H. 1998. Speech perception. In Jean, Gleason & Nan, Ratner (eds.) Psycholinguistics, 107–156. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning Inc.Google Scholar
Yip, Moira. 1993. Cantonese loanword phonology and optimality theory. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 2, 261–291.Google Scholar