Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Davidson, Lisa

Titel

The Relationships between the Perception of Non-Native Phonotactics and Loanword Adaptation

Ist Teil von

• Phonology, 2007-01, Vol.24 (2), p.261-286

Erscheinungsjahr

2007

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This study examines how phonetic details produced by non-bilingual borrowers ('disseminators') are categorised when new words are transmitted to the monolinguals of the borrowing language community ('recipients'). The stimuli are based on research showing that the schwa inserted by English speakers into non-native clusters (e.g. /zg(script a)mo/ --> [z(raised schwa)g(script a)mo]) differs acoustically from lexical schwa (e.g. [z(schwa)g(script a)mo]). Listeners transcribed Cluster (CC), Lexical (C(schwa)C) and Transitional (C(raised schwa)C) stimuli produced by an English speaker. Transcriptions of C(raised schwa)C stimuli were split between CC and CVC, and participants wrote C(raised schwa)C with a vowel less often than they did C(schwa)C. This demonstrated that listeners had difficulty discriminating between C(raised schwa)C and both CC and C(schwa)C. These findings suggest that C(raised schwa)C is acoustically intermediate between clusters and schwas; thus recipients may assign C(raised schwa)C token to either of the phonotactic categories CC or C(schwa)C. The ramifications of these findings for loanwords and the acquisition of phonological contrast are discussed. Adapted from the source document