LINGUIST List 17.14
Tue Jan 10 2006
Diss: Phonology: Miao: 'Loanword Adaptation in Manda...'
Editor for this issue: Meredith Valant
<meredithlinguistlist.org>
Directory
1. Ruiqin
Miao,
Loanword Adaptation in Mandarin Chinese: Perceptual, phonological and sociolinguistic factors
Message 1: Loanword Adaptation in Mandarin Chinese: Perceptual, phonological and sociolinguistic factors
Date: 08-Jan-2006
From: Ruiqin Miao <ruiqinmiaogmail.com>
Subject: Loanword Adaptation in Mandarin Chinese: Perceptual, phonological and sociolinguistic factors
Institution: State University of New York at Stony Brook
Program: Department of Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2005
Author: Ruiqin Miao
Dissertation Title: Loanword Adaptation in Mandarin Chinese: Perceptual, phonological and sociolinguistic factors
Linguistic Field(s):
Phonology
Subject Language(s): Chinese, Mandarin (cmn)
Language Family(ies): Sino-Tibetan
Dissertation Director:
Ellen Broselow
Lori Repetti
Dissertation Abstract:
This dissertation is a study of Mandarin Chinese loanword phonology, withfocus on phoneme substitution patterns for consonants and processes used inresolving foreign syllable structures which are illicit in Mandarin. Thedata serving as the basis for analysis are loans borrowed into modernMandarin from three Indo-European languages, namely English, German andItalian. I investigate the perceptual and phonological factors thatregulate the variability of loanword adaptation in Mandarin. In addition, Idiscuss the influence of sociolinguistic factors on the phonologicalprocesses observed in the data.
Based on the adaptation patterns in Mandarin, I argue that the recipientlanguage speakers' perceptual knowledge plays a crucial role in loanwordphonology and that loanword processes function to create an adapted formthat is perceived as sufficiently similar to the source word. I propose aconstraint 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 ofvarious correspondence constraints are projected by the perceptualsimilarity between the source form and the adapted form. Furthermore, thisanalysis is tested by data from online loan perception and adaptationexperiments, the results of which corroborate the hypothesis thatperceptual similarity plays an important role in loanword adaptation.
This research supports cross-linguistic findings about the preference forfaithfulness of manner over faithfulness of other features such as voicingand place (e.g. Broselow 1999, Steriade 2002) and the preference forsegment preservation over deletion in loan adaptation (e.g. Paradis &LaCharité 1997, Uffmann 2001, 2004). It enriches our understanding of therole of perceptual similarity and perceptual salience in phonology andtheir relationship to constraint ranking.
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