<OT> New Posting: ROA-814

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 814-0306

Loanword Adaptation in Mandarin Chinese: Perceptual, Phonological and Sociolinguistic Factors

Ruiqin Miao <ruiqinmiao at gmail.com>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=814


Abstract:
This dissertation is a study of Mandarin Chinese loanword
phonology, with focus on phoneme substitution patterns for
consonants and processes used in resolving foreign syllable
structures which are illicit in Mandarin. The data serving
as the basis for analysis are loans borrowed into modern
Mandarin from three Indo-European languages, namely English,
German and Italian. I investigate the perceptual and phonological
factors that regulate the variability of loanword adaptation
in Mandarin. In addition, I discuss the influence of sociolinguis
tic factors on the phonological processes observed in the data.


Based on the adaptation patterns in Mandarin, I argue that
the recipient language speakers' perceptual knowledge plays
a crucial role in loanword phonology and that loanword processes
function to create an adapted form that is perceived as
sufficiently similar to the source word. I propose a constraint
ranking analysis within the Optimality Theoretic framework
(Prince & Smolensky 1993, McCarthy & Prince 1993, McCarthy
& Prince 1995). Following Steriade's (2002) P-map hypothesis,
I conjecture that rankings of various correspondence constraints
are projected by the perceptual similarity between the source
form and the adapted form. Furthermore, this analysis is
tested by data from online loan perception and adaptation
experiments, the results of which corroborate the hypothesis
that perceptual similarity plays an important role in loanword
adaptation.


This research supports cross-linguistic findings about the
preference for faithfulness of manner over faithfulness
of other features such as voicing and place (e.g. Broselow
1999, Steriade 2002) and the preference for segment preservation
over deletion in loan adaptation (e.g. Paradis & LaCharité
1997, Uffmann 2001, 2004). It enriches our understanding
of the role of perceptual similarity and perceptual salience
in phonology and their relationship to constraint ranking.

Comments: 
Keywords: Mandarin, loanword phonology, perceptual similarity
Areas: Phonology
Type: PhD Dissertation

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=814