LINGUIST List 14.3045

Sat Nov 8 2003

Qs: Uvular Consonant Effects; Loanword Adaptation

Editor for this issue: Naomi Fox <foxlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Warren Maguire, Effect of uvular consonants on adjacent vowels
2. Jennifer Smith, Loanword adaptation of syllable-final clusters

Dear Linguistlist,

part of my PhD research concerns the possible effects of historical
uvular R (which may or may not have been labialised) on adjacent
vowels in Tyneside and Northumberland English.

In order to put this research in context, I am interested to know
whether uvular consonants (labialised or not) affect adjacent vowels
in other languages, and what kind of effect they might have.

Any examples (synchronic and diachronic) and references would be much
appreciated.

Thanks,

Warren Maguire
School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics
University of Newcastle Upon Tyne
http://www.students.ncl.ac.uk/w.n.maguire/ 

I am working on a project related to phonological 
modifications of loanwords. In particular, I am interested 
in things that happen to words with syllable-final clusters 
when they are borrowed into languages that don't allow such 
clusters. Any suggestions of languages that might belong to 
one of the following two categories would be greatly 
appreciated. 

(1) Languages that have two (or more) *different strategies* 
for adapting borrowed coda clusters, depending on the nature 
of the consonants in the cluster (such as sonority class, 
place of articulation, or status as a legitimate coda 
consonant in the borrowing language). Japanese, Korean, and 
Cantonese are examples of this type of language.

(2) Languages that adapt CVXY to CV.XvY, where X and Y are 
*both obstruents* (stops, fricatives, or affricates) and 
small [v] is an epenthetic vowel. I would also be interested 
in knowing whether this is the adaptation strategy used for 
all borrowed coda clusters in the language, or whether there 
are multiple adaptation strategies as decribed in (1) above.

Please reply directly to me (jlsmithemail.unc.edu). I will 
post a summary of any results I receive.

Many thanks,
- Jen

 Jennifer Smith Department of Linguistics
 jlsmithunc.edu 322 Dey Hall, CB #3155
 http://www.unc.edu/~jlsmith University of North Carolina
 		 Chapel Hill, NC 27599 USA