Ask-A-Linguist Message Details
| Subject: | What happens at the boundary of a phonological code-switch? |
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| Question: |
I want to embed a Japanese word into my English speech, but I want to be faithful to the Japanese pronunciation, so I enter a ''Japanese pronunciation mode''. Briefly, I understand this as an example of code-switching. For example, the Japanese word for thank you is [aɾiɡatoː]<あ りがとう>. Now I want to say ''it is {a/an} aɾiɡatoː'', or alternatively if [koaɾiɡatoː] was the word I would want to say ''it is {a/an} koaɾiɡatoː''. The assumption is that I am going to be 100% prosodically and segmentally faithful to the embedded Japanese word. To be precise, let # be the switch point. Then English phonology imposes upon you the obligation /a/->[an] / _V But if you actually say [it is an aɾiɡatoː] (and this seems to be the observed form) you didn't apply the above rule, but a rule of the form /a/->[an] / _#V This seems contradictory to your intention to code switch; the intention was for V to be under the sole purchase of Japanese phonology, but clearly V has participated in a rule of English phonology. I don't understand why, when under the assumption of faithful code switching, a foreign import can alter the host sentence. |
| Reply: |
This strikes me as something that you have to be a linguist to see as an issue, if you will allow me to put it like that! Surely the English rule is to use "an" if the next chunk of speech begins physically with a vowel sound, which 'arigato' even spoken in a good Japanese accent does; the rule doesn't care about abstract things like your "#" symbol? Geoffrey Sampson |
| Reply From: | Geoffrey Richard Sampson click here to access email |
| Date: | 11-Sep-2012 |
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