Sound sequence adaptation in loanword phonology

This dissertation investigates the phonology of loanword adaptation of sound sequences. When speakers borrow words that contain phonotactically marked sequences of sounds, there are a number of different ways by which they may adapt the foreign word into their native language. The type of adaptations that occur cross-linguistically and the range and distribution of occurrence is the focal point of this study. Loanword data from fifty-three languages were collected, analyzed, and assembled into a typology of adaptation strategies, as well as a typology a languages based on their adaptation tendencies. The trends in both of these typologies indicate a strong cross linguistic bias against consonant deletion in loanword adaptation; sequences of sounds in foreign words (e.g. consonant clusters) tend to be adapted faithfully in loanwords. When a repair happens, the repair is almost always epenthesis. It is argued that this is due to a general need to preserve the linguistic information in a foreign word when it is first used by speakers of the borrowing language, in order to facilitate communication and comprehension of a word that is unfamiliar.;In addition to providing cross-linguistic data and a typological analysis of loanword adaptation, this dissertation contributes to phonology by providing a method of classifying languages based on their treatment of foreign words containing phonotactically marked sequences of sounds. Loanword adaptation data are highly variable; no language in this study behaves consistently with respect to how it handles sequences of sounds in foreign words. It is thus not always immediately clear what adaptation strategy that a language prefers. A method involving a series of statistical tests is developed and employed in order to determine the classification of languages by their preferred adaptation strategy.;This dissertation also provides an analysis of consonant cluster repair strategy with respect to location in the word. This analysis reveals various word position asymmetries in loanword adaption. Word-final consonant clusters are more likely to be repaired than word-initial and word-medial consonant clusters; deletion is observed most frequently in word-final position. That is, deletion is generally intolerable as a repair, but less so for word-final consonant clusters. It is argued that this is due to the relative strength of perceptual cues. Where perceptual cues are weakest, i.e. word-finally, deletion is more tolerable as repair, as deleting a weakly cued consonant has relatively minor perceptual consequences.;A case study of loanword adaptation in Tongan is also provided in order to further examine the role of perceptual cues in describing adaptation patterns. The analysis of Tongan confirms the primacy of perceptual cues in describing loanword adaptation patterns, in addition to showing that a complete description of a language's loanword adaptation behavior need also include language-specific properties that may not be detected in a broad typological analysis. In other words, it is argued that the need to preserve linguistic information, i.e. perceptual cues, is necessary but not sufficient for a complete understanding of sound sequence adaptation in loanwords. The phonological, sociological, and historical properties of the borrowing language also play an important role in determining how sequences of sounds in foreign words are adapted.