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Historical Linguistics 2015: Selected papers from the 22nd International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Naples, 27-31 July 2015
Edited by Michela Cennamo and Claudia Fabrizio
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 348] 2019
► pp. 57–74

Chapter 3
Pertinacity in loanwords

Same underlying systems, different outputs

editor

Native speakers are often surprised by the way different languages adapt their words; the same phoneme may be borrowed into different languages in different ways. Even related languages need not adapt the same phoneme in an identical fashion. Evidence from a variety of languages suggests that during loan adaptation, the underlying phonological systems of the donor language need to match those of the borrowing language, as has been proposed by many in the literature. Here we show that the universal principle of “PLACE first”, which promotes overlapping place of articulation features (including ARTICULATORS and TONGUE HEIGHT), guides the substitution choice, resulting in different outputs from the same loan.

Keywords: phonology, loanword adaptation, FUL, Bengali, English
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Adapting /θ/ in Bengali
  • 3.English /θ/ in German and Dutch
  • 4.Brief excursus: /θ/ into English via Greek
  • 5.Mapping loans – same pattern, different output?
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 September 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.348.03lah
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