Loan Phonology

For many different reasons, speakers borrow words from other languages to fill gaps in their own lexical inventory. The past ten years have been characterized by a great interest among phonologists in the issue of how the nativization of loanwords occurs. The general feeling is that loanword nativization provides a direct window for observing how acoustic cues are categorized in terms of the distinctive features relevant to the L1 phonological system as well as for studying L1 phonological processes in action and thus to the true synchronic phonology of L1. The collection of essays presented in this volume provides an overview of the complex issues phonologists face when investigating this phenomenon and, more generally, the ways in which unfamiliar sounds and sound sequences are adapted to converge with the native language’s sound pattern. This book is of interest to theoretical phonologists as well as to linguists interested in language contact phenomena

Regularities and Irregularities in Chinese Historical Phonology

With a combination of methodologies from Western and Chinese traditional historical linguistics, this thesis is an attempt to survey and synthetically analyze the major sound changes in Chinese phonological history. It addresses two hypotheses – the Neogrammarian regularity hypothesis and the unidirectionality hypothesis – and tries to question their validity and applicability. Drawing from fourteen types of “regular” and “irregular” processes, the thesis argues that the origins and impetuses of sound change is far from just phonetic environment (“regular” changes) and lexical diffusion (“irregular” changes), and that sound change is not unidirectional because of the existence and significance of fortifying and bi/multidirectional changes. The thesis also examines the sociopolitical aspect of sound change through the discussion of language changes resulting from social, geographical and historical factors, suggesting that the study of sound change should be more interdisciplinary and miscellaneous in order to explain the phenomena more thoroughly and reach a better understanding of how human languages function both synchronically and diachronically

Tones in Zhangzhou: Pitch and Beyond

This study draws on various approaches—field linguistics; auditory and acoustic phonetics; and statistics—to explore and explain the nature of Zhangzhou tones, an under-described Southern Min variety. Several original findings emerged from the analyses of the data from 21 speakers. The realisations of Zhangzhou tones are multidimensional. The single parameter of pitch/F0 is not sufficient to characterise tonal contrasts in either monosyllabic or polysyllabic settings in Zhangzhou. Instead, various parameters, including pitch/F0, duration, vowel quality, voice quality, and syllable coda type, interact in a complicated but consistent way to code tonal distinctions. Zhangzhou has eight tones rather than seven tones as proposed in previous studies. This finding resulted from examining the realisations of diverse parameters across three different contexts—isolation, phrase-initial, and phrase-final—, rather than classifying tones in citation and in terms of the preservation of Middle Chinese tonal categories. Tonal contrasts in Zhangzhou can be neutralised across different linguistic contexts. Identifying the number of tonal contrasts based simply on tonal realisations in the citation environment is not sufficient. Instead, examining tonal realisations across different linguistic contexts beyond monosyllables is imperative for understanding the nature of tone. Tone sandhi in Zhangzhou is syntactically relevant. The tone sandhi domain is not phonologically determined but rather is aligned with a syntactic phrase XP. Within a given XP, the realisations of the tones at non-phrase-final positions undergo alternation phonologically and phonetically. Nevertheless, the alterations are sensitive only to the phrase boundaries and are not affected by the internal structure of syntactic phrases. Tone sandhi in Zhangzhou is phonologically inert but phonetically sensitive. The realisations of Zhangzhou tones in disyllabic phrases are not categorically affected by their surrounding tones but are phonetically sensitive to surrounding environments. For instance, the pitch/F0 onsets of phrase-final tones are largely sensitive to pitch/F0 offsets of preceding tones and appear to have diverse variants. The mappings between Zhangzhou citation and disyllabic tones are morphologically conditioned. Phrase-initial tones are largely not related to the citation tones at either the phonological or the phonetic level while phrase-final tones are categorically related to the citation tones but phonetically are not quite the same because of predictable sensitivity to surrounding environments. Each tone in Zhangzhou can be regarded as a single morpheme having two alternating allomorphs (tonemes), one for non-phrase-final variants and one for variants in citation and phrase-final contexts, both of which are listed in the mental lexicon of native Zhangzhou speakers but are phonetically distant on the surface. In summary, the realisations of Zhangzhou tones are multidimensional, involving a variety of segmental and suprasegmental parameters. The interactions of Zhangzhou tones are complicated, involving phonetics, phonology, syntax, and morphology. Neutralisation of Zhangzhou tonal contrasts occurs across different contexts, including citation, phrase-final, and non-phrase-final. Thus, researchers must go beyond pitch to understand tone thoroughly as a phenomenon in Southern Min

A formal study of syllable, tone, stress and domain in Chinese languages

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1990.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 197-207).by San Duanmu.Ph.D

A phonological study on English loanwords in Mandarin Chinese

The general opinion about the way English borrowings enter Mandarin is that English words are preferably integrated into Mandarin via calquing, which includes a special case called Phonetic-Semantic Matching (PSM) (Zuckermann 2004), meaning words being phonetically assimilated and semantically transferred at the same time. The reason for that is that Mandarin is written in Chinese characters, which each has a single-syllable pronunciation and a self-contained meaning, and the meaning achieved by the selection of characters may match the original English words. There are some cases which are agreed by many scholars to be PSM. However, as this study demonstrates, the semantics of the borrowing and the original word do not really match, the relation considered to be “artificial” by Novotná (1967). This study analyses a corpus of 600 established English loanwords in Mandarin to test the hypothesis that semantic matching is not a significant factor in the loanword adaptation process because there is no semantic relation between the borrowed words and the characters used to record them. To measure the phonological similarity between the English input and the Mandarin output, one of the models in adult second language perception, the Perceptual Assimilation Model (Best 1995a), is used as the framework to judge the phonemic matching between the English word and the adapted Mandarin outcome. The meanings of the characters used in recording the loanwords are referred in The Dictionary of Modern Chinese to see whether there are cases of semantic matching. The phonotactic adaptation of illicit sound sequences is also analysed in Optimality Theory (McCarthy 2002) to give an account of phonetic-phonological analysis of the adaptation process. Thus, the percentage of Phono-Semantic Matching is obtained in the corpus. As the corpus investigation shows, the loanwords that can match up both the phonological and the semantic quality of the original words are very few. The most commonly acknowledged phono-semantic matching cases are only phonetic loanwords. In conclusion, this paper argues that the semantic resource of Chinese writing system is not used as a major factor in the integration of loanwords. Borrowing between languages with different writing systems is not much different than borrowing between languages with same writing system or without a writing system. Though Chinese writing system interferes with the borrowing, it is the linguistic factors that determine the borrowing process and results. Chinese characters are, by a large proportion, conventional graphic signs with a phonetic value being the more significant factor in loanword integration process

Nasal codas in Standard Chinese: a study in the framework of the distinctive feature theory

Thesis (Ph.D.)—Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, 2006Includes bibliographical references (p. 145-147)This electronic version was prepared by the student. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.NIH Chyn Duog Shiah Memorial FellowshipPh. D

Elements, Government, and Licensing: Developments in phonology

Elements, Government, and Licensing brings together new theoretical and empirical developments in phonology. It covers three principal domains of phonological representation: melody and segmental structure; tone, prosody and prosodic structure; and phonological relations, empty categories, and vowel-zero alternations. Theoretical topics covered include the formalisation of Element Theory, the hotly debated topic of structural recursion in phonology, and the empirical status of government. In addition, a wealth of new analyses and empirical evidence sheds new light on empty categories in phonology, the analysis of certain consonantal sequences, phonological and non-phonological alternation, the elemental composition of segments, and many more. Taking up long-standing empirical and theoretical issues informed by the Government Phonology and Element Theory, this book provides theoretical advances while also bringing to light new empirical evidence and analysis challenging previous generalisations. The insights offered here will be equally exciting for phonologists working on related issues inside and outside the Principles & Parameters programme, such as researchers working in Optimality Theory or classical rule-based phonology

A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Dzongkha: Variation inFinal Nasals and Rhotics

This first quantitative sociolinguistic analysis of Dzongkha (Bhutan’s official language), as spoken by residents of the capital Thimphu, investigates variation and change in two salient and traditional linguistic features: syllable-final nasals (N) and postvocalic rhotics (R). Thimphu is Bhutan’s central location for education, jobs, commerce and social network ties. Both (N) and (R) show variable deletion, as correlated with internal (phonetic environment, tone, grammatical category, phrase position) and external (style, sex, age, region, education) explanatory factors. Data came from thirty-six participants originating in three regional communities (Eastern native Tshangla speakers, Western native Dzongkha speakers and Southern native Lhotshampa speakers). All were Bhutanese nationals now living in Thimphu, divided amongst school children at seven schools, their teachers and their parents. 3,636 nasal tokens and 2,196 rhotic tokens were analysed using Rbrul to perform multiple logistic regression. The findings demonstrate variation (and suggest change in progress) for both (N) and (R). Low and mid vowels, prepositions and adjectives, preceding and following sonorants, low-toned syllables, and non-initial position favour deletion of (N). Lhotshampa and Dzongkha speakers delete nasals more; speakers with secondary education preferred the traditional form. For postvocalic (R), among linguistic factors, low-toned syllables, certain grammatical categories, preceding front vowels, non-final positions and following obstruents promote deletion. Speakers with Western Dzongkha backgrounds favoured deletion, as did older adults generally. For both (R) and (N), principal results showed final consonants retained in formal reading tasks, but style could not be included in multiple regression analysis. Variation in Dzongkha reflects external developments and socio-economic changes across Thimphu and the country in recent decades. Qualitative analysis of linguistic attitudes, ideology and identity also contribute towards explaining variation and potential change in the use of these features. A grammatical sketch and history of Dzongkha are provided