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The relationship between the perception of non-native phonotactics and loanword adaptation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2007

Lisa Davidson
Lisa Davidson
Affiliation:
New York University
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Abstract

This study examines how phonetic details produced by non-bilingual borrowers (‘disseminators’) are categorised when new words are transmitted to the monolinguals of the borrowing language community (‘recipients’). The stimuli are based on research showing that the schwa inserted by English speakers into non-native clusters (e.g. /zgɑmo/→[zəgɑmo]) differs acoustically from lexical schwa (e.g. [zəgɑmo]). In Experiment 1, listeners transcribed Cluster (CC), Lexical (CəC) and Transitional (CəC) stimuli produced by an English speaker. Transcriptions of CəC stimuli were split between CC and CVC, and participants wrote CəC with a vowel less often than they did CəC. Experiment 2 demonstrated that listeners had difficulty discriminating between CəC and both CC and CəC. These findings suggest that CəC is acoustically intermediate between clusters and schwas; thus recipients may assign CəC token to either of the phonotactic categories CC or CəC. The ramifications of these findings for loanwords and the acquisition of phonological contrast are discussed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Phonology , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , August 2007 , pp. 261 - 286
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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