New Tendencies Of English Loanwords In Chinese And Their Standardization

This thesis makes clear three new tendencies for English loanwords in Chinese through documentation and analysis of statistic data and questionnaires, analyzes acceptability of combinations of syllables, segments and words' aesthetics with the frame of Optimality Theory and then aims at providing new principles for standardization of English loanwords.Optimality Theory (shortened as OT) was formulated by Prince and Smolensky (1993). The central idea of this theory is that universal constraints are ranked and violable; a surface form is considered to be the most harmonic or optimal in the sense that it minimally violates or best satisfies a set of hierarchically ranked constraints with the other potential surface forms. Professor Zhang Jisheng (2003) published his research on syllable acceptability of loanwords in Chinese, which holds that the "Chinese phonology of loanwords represents a series of hierarchically-ranked constraints which test, adapt and naturalize the phonological structure of the loanwords and make them phonologically harmonic with the Chinese." Based on OT, he proposed the following hierarchy of constraints, "COMPLEX/ CODA-CON >> DEL ([CC]) >> MinMd >> Max-IO >> Dep-IO" as the phonological law in syllable regulation of loanwords' phonology. In the field of phonology of loanword, other aspects should be taken into consideration such as...