Loanword adaptation as first-language phonological perception

We show that loanword adaptation can be understood entirely in terms of phonological and phonetic comprehension and production mechanisms in the first language. We provide explicit accounts of several loanword adaptation phenomena (in Korean) in terms of an Optimality-Theoretic grammar model with the same three levels of representation that are needed to describe L1 phonology: the underlying form, the phonological surface form, and the auditory-phonetic form. The model is bidirectional, i.e., the same constraints and rankings are used by the listener and by the speaker. These constraints and rankings are the same for L1 processing and loanword adaptation

BAHASA BANJAR: ITS VARIETIES AND CHARACTERISTICS (A CONCEPTUALDESCRIPTION OF BAHASA BANJAR IN SOCIOLINGUISTICS POINT OF VIEW)

Indonesia is a country which consists of thousands of islands. One of those islands is Borneo or Kalimantan. Kalimantan is generally divided into four provinces, west, centre, south, and east province. Within those four provinces, occur many languages which are used by its citizen. One of the languages is Bahasa banjar which is mainly used by Banjarese people in south Kalimantan. Connected with the fact above this writings will be discussed about three points, the first is about the varieties of Bahasa banjar, which is seen from the sociolinguistics points of view, the second is about the characteristics of Bahasa banjar in general and the last is the characteristics on each varieties. Every description in this writing is a conceptual description only, every data which is given, and every statement which is given in this writing is only for the understanding of the description of Bahasa banjar

Dutch and German 3-year-olds’ representations of voicing alternations

The voicing contrast is neutralised syllable and word finally in Dutch and German, leading to alternations within the morphological paradigm (e.g. Dutch ‘bed(s)’, be[t] be[d]en, German ‘dog(s)’, Hun[t]-Hun[d]e). Despite structural similarity, language-specific morphological, phonological and lexical properties impact on the distribution of this alternation in the two languages. Previous acquisition research has focused on one language only, predominantly focusing on children’s production accuracy, concluding that alternations are not acquired until late in the acquisition process in either language. This paper adapts a perceptual method to investigate how voicing alternations are represented in the mental lexicon of Dutch and German 3-year-olds. Sensitivity to mispronunciations of voicing word-medially in plural forms was measured using a visual fixation procedure. Dutch children exhibited evidence of overgeneralising the voicing alternation, whereas German children consistently preferred the correct pronunciation to mispronunciations. Results indicate that the acquisition of voicing alternations is influenced by language-specific factors beyond the alternation itself